


Reincarnation Blues

by MaryPSue



Series: Reincarnation Blues [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, F/M, Gen, Human!Bill, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 19:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 95,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3621903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mabel's tendency to date boys who turn out to have some sort of supernatural weirdness going on follows her through multiple lifetimes, familiar faces turn up in surprising places, and the gang learns an important lesson about second chances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the [Transcendence AU](http://transcendence-au.tumblr.com).

Ian didn’t realise how long he’d been sitting in the same place, drawing in a near-trance, until the sound of the studio door sliding open and his girlfriend’s voice broke him out of it. “Ian? I’m turning the music off. Why do you play bluegrass so loud, anyway? That volume should be reserved for stuff you can actually dance to!”

Ian raised a hand in greeting, but he didn’t turn around. Mira must have hit the power button on the front of the massive old stereo, because a sudden silence fell, making his ears ring.

“Hey there, sexy,” Mira said, draping herself across his shoulders, pressing a kiss to his neck just above the collar of his flannel shirt. He swatted playfully at her with his left hand, the right scribbling down a few more expressions, before he turned around and tilted his head back for a soft kiss on the lips. “Aren’t these yesterday’s clothes? You haven’t slept, have you.”

In answer, Ian raised both hands, stained black to the wrists with graphite. “I got six of ten boards done,” he said proudly, and Mira shook her head, giving him the exasperated but fond smile that he recognized as her ‘Ian forgot how to human again’ look.

“Victory! Now tell me you’ve had something to eat today?” When Ian just gave her a sheepish grin, Mira sighed and flicked him on the nose with one finger. “What would you even do without me?”

“Starve, probably.” 

“And die of sleep deprivation.”

Ian snorted. “Sleep’s nothing more than a sneak preview for death. _And_ it’s for people who have free time. Do I smell burgers?”

“I got you fully loaded. With onion rings.”

“Oh, stardust, you know what I like.” 

…

“There’s somebody I want you to meet,” Mira said, as she balled up the empty paper wrapping from her burger. She glanced over at Ian, and he swallowed his bite of burger, nodding for her to go on. “I’ve known him for a long time, almost since I was born, and he’s like a big brother to me. A very…overprotective big brother.”

“Okay,” Ian said, hoping the little flicker of apprehension that had shot through him at the emphasis she’d put on the word ‘overprotective’ didn’t come through in his voice. “If it’s this important to you – that means this thing, between us, this is pretty serious, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it really is.” Mira nodded, her round cheeks turning an adorable shade of dusky pink as she met his eyes, and he took a moment just to look at her, to drink in the sight of her, little and sweet, with huge brown eyes and that kilowatt smile that made even the greyest day seem sunny. She was…she was downright perfect, and he really _didn’t_ know what he’d do without her. 

“Then it’s high time I got to meet the family! Find out where this comet got her core from.” Ian gave Mira a soft bap on the arm with a loose fist and a kiss on the cheek, and she grinned. “So when are you planning on introducing us?” he asked, nonchalantly changing the subject. He didn’t want to give her too much time to think about what had happened the last time she’d tried to introduce him to one of her friends. 

Honestly, he didn’t want to think about it too much, either. It was bad enough that her best friend thought that Mira was dating a literal serial killer. If this ‘overprotective’ big-brother-figure got the same impression…well, Ian would rather just not think about that. 

It’d be fine. Probably. After all, now he’d have some time to prepare, decide on something nice to wear that wouldn’t look too formal or too casual, practice what he wanted to say -

“Um, I was thinking today, actually.” Mira reached into her cartoon-rabbit-shaped bag, fishing around. “Like, at a…sort of…right-now-ish kind of time.” 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ian rubbed at his scruffy reddish goatee without really realizing he was doing it, a list of reasons why this was a terrible idea unspooling in his head. “I mean, you said it yourself. I haven’t slept, I’m wearing yesterday’s clothes, I hadn’t eaten before you brought dinner, I haven’t shaved -”

“And you look like a lumberjack and smell like one too.” Mira laughed, but Ian didn’t. He looked down at himself instead, noticing all the pencil smudges and grease stains his shirt had picked up, no matter how minute. Suddenly, he felt clumsy and unfamiliar with his own limbs, weighted down with lack of sleep. Not to mention that he probably looked like someone had emptied an entire pot of fry oil over his head and wrapped him in rags… 

Mira snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Hey, doofus, it’s going to be fine. You look fine. He’ll love you.”

“I’d really rather do this on a full night’s sleep. And in better clothes! I mean, this is important to you, it only deserves to be treated like a special occasion, and you _don’t_ wear plaid flannel for a special -” He only stopped when Mira lightly pressed a hand over his mouth.

“Babe. You’re babbling.”

Ian gently lifted her hand away, holding it in his and staring at her multicoloured manicure instead of meeting her eyes. “I know. It’s just – this means a lot to you.” He knew Mira probably had to strain to catch his next words, but he didn’t really care. “And I don’t want to fuck it up by making this guy think I’m, you know, weird.”

“He says to the girl who taught herself how to eat licorice nibs through her nose,” Mira teased, lifting his chin with one finger so that he met her eyes. “Ian. It’s going to be all right. Trust me?”

Ian barely managed to muster up a smile. This was going to be a _disaster_. Why couldn’t she see it? 

Of course, he knew why. It was the same reason why they worked, why they complemented each other. Just like she was his self-preservation instinct, he was her foresight. She got him out of his head, and he got her into hers.

“I trust you,” he sighed, at last. Maybe she was right. 

“That’s what I like to hear.” She reached back into her bag, rummaging around until she pulled out an x-acto knife, clicking out the blade. “Just…don’t freak out, okay?” she said, and the twinge of worry that had shot down Ian’s spine at the sight of the knife returned, thicker and more demanding.

“Stardust, if you’re saying that to _me_ …just what should I be expecting, here?”

Mira shot him a weak, probably lopsided grin, and then, before he could stop her, quickly sliced a line down the pad of her left thumb. “Alcor!” she called, as a few drops of blood splashed onto the concrete floor of the studio. “Come meet my boyfriend!”

Even if he hadn’t been running on very little sleep, Ian thought he still would have nearly passed out when the demon Alcor, the Dreambender, Twin Star, Devourer of Souls, holder of at least seventy more titles that Ian couldn’t be bothered to remember, appeared out of thin air, hovering in midair in front of Mira like this was just a regular afternoon visit. “All right, where’s this -”

His eyes fell on Ian, and Alcor stopped nearly in the middle of a word. Ian swallowed, the sudden silence in the studio crackling with tension. 

Mira grinned, even though even her normally sunny smile seemed a little strained. “Um, Ian, Alcor. Alcor, Ian.”

Ian glanced over at Mira with wide eyes before turning back to the _demon, unholy fucking shit, Mira’s ‘big brother’ is a literal actual fucking demon_ hovering in midair in front of him. “Hi. Name’s Ian Beale,” he said, and probably only Mira knew him well enough to be able to tell from his voice that he was nervous, but to him, it sounded loud and clear. “Nice to meet you? Mira says you two are close.”

Mira had to nudge Alcor with her elbow to shock him out of staring hard at Ian and get him to actually respond. “N͏ice t̷o͢ ̡m̕e̷e͟t y͞ou͜,” Alcor said sharply, every word clipped and heavy on the reverb. “Yo̡ų ̡l̸ook.͝..f̷̵̡a̶̷͠m̷̴͝i͟ļi͘a̧r͜.̶”

Ian looked over at Mira, but she looked as stunned as he felt. “I…don’t think we’ve met?” he said, at last, and didn’t miss the way Mira’s face settled almost imperceptibly into an expression of relief. “I mean, you’re a preeetty memorable guy. I don’t think yours is a face I’d forget.”

Alcor didn’t answer, just narrowed his disconcerting gold-on-pure-black eyes suspiciously. It was all Ian could do to keep eye contact, trying not to blink too much or too little. Science said either would make him look creepy, and experience backed it up. Internally, he was quietly starting to panic, running over possible reasons he might look familiar to the Lord of Nightmares. Barely a minute in, and this was already going worse than he could have possibly expected. He should _not_ have let Mira convince him to jump in without preparing!

"Ian and I met in that business course I took for self-publishing," Mira said, brightly, thankfully interrupting what was about to become a staredown. For an instant, Ian almost wished for telepathy, so he could tell her silently just how perfect she was, but he had to settle for shooting her a grateful smile. "He works in animation, mostly, and it turned out he’s done boards for some of my favourite shows."

“R̢e̸al̸ly͠.̧” Alcor’s voice was flat, completely without amusement or interest, and he didn’t so much as glance over at Mira. All his attention was fixed on Ian, putting Ian uncomfortably in mind of a cat with a mouse between its paws. 

Ian looked over at Mira helplessly, and she gave him her best reassuring smile, reaching out to wrap her hand around his and stop him drumming his fingers mechanically against the countertop. “I was on the team for the Dream Boy High series reboot, so that was torture, and I drafted a few character designs for Don’t Turn Out The Lights, you know, the scary story anthology? That was fun, I’ve always wanted a chance to give small children nightmares, and, uh…” Ian shifted backwards, pressing himself against the counter as Alcor leaned into his personal space and…sniffed? “Hey, hey, hey! I did try to convince Mira to let me go shower and change before this.”

“I ķ̡̢n̛͘ò̵ẃ̧ ̴̕͠ y̢ǫú,” Alcor said, darkly, and Ian’s mouth went dry. The stare the demon turned on Ian was equal parts suspicion and confusion, and it didn’t seem to be looking just at his face. Alcor stared like he was reading Ian’s life story written on the back of his skull, which, Ian guessed, wasn’t so far from the truth. He could almost feel it, like the sensation of eyes on your back turned up to an almost uncomfortable intensity, raking across everything that made him _him_. “H͠oẃ do I k҉n̵oẃ you.̶.̡.̢?”

“I really don’t think you do,” Ian said, a little more forcefully, giving Mira’s hand a squeeze. Something about that golden gaze was making his skin prickle, calling up the strangest detached swirls of irritation and resentment. “Look, I’ve never summoned you, I’ve never been part of a cult, I’ve only ever seen you in textbooks. I was kind of expecting it to stay that way, too. Not that I’m not okay with you being a big part of Mira’s life, or anything! Just that when she mentioned wanting me to meet this guy who’s like her brother, I wasn’t expecting the _Dreambender_.” He shrugged, with a short, nervous laugh, and added, “But hey, that’s my shooting star, always full of surprises -”

A slight twitch of the demon’s right eye was the only warning Ian got before Alcor gestured and Ian’s hand was ripped out of Mira’s. He only just had time to realise he was airborne before whatever invisible force had picked him up smashed him against the wall above the counter and pinned him there, knocking his head and throwing his vision into dizzy whirls even as pain pulsed through his skull and his spine. 

Through the pounding in his head and his wobbling vision, Ian saw Mira fly at Alcor, shouting, “What are you _doing_!?” Alcor only glared, his lips curled in a snarl that showed jagged teeth, both his eyes locked on Ian and full of pure, undisguised hatred. And – with an almost electric jolt that felt somehow, strangely, familiar, Ian realized that the demon had a third staring eye fixed on him, outlined in gold on his forehead. The strange irritation spiked, along with a far more obvious and rational terror, and he kicked out, struggling against the invisible force holding him in place even though he knew it was useless.

“ ** _Y͢͏̴̠͚͓̣̭o͕̣̭͙̦͔̻̭͡ư̷̳̤̮̝͕͔͝,̶̙̺̪_** ” Alcor growled, not taking his eyes from Ian. The room shook with the force of the single word and its echoes, knocking Ian’s head against the wall again and setting his world spinning all over again. “ **I ̶̛̕t͠h̵̀o҉̧̕ú͞ǵ͜h͜͠t̛͢ af̸̧t̷e̴͜͜r͝ ̵a͏̀ ̀m̴͘il͝͏l̸͢͠e͞n̛͟nì̛u̡m͘ ͠͡yơ͝u҉́ ̶m̛i̵͝ģ́h́͞t̡͠ ́͢h̵̢̕a̧v̶͜e͏ l̨̕e͝a͘҉r̀͢n͘ed̢͜͝ ͟t̶͜͡ǫ͜ ̧ l̸̨̕e̶̷͘͟a̧͘v̴́̕e̵̡͘ ̛̀͡m̷̨̛͝ỳ ̶̡̢̀f̵͢͠a̶͜͠m̀͏̢i҉̧͜l͟͏y̨̛͘ ̸̶҉͟Ą͍̙̖̥̟̼̙͝L̤͍̬͔O̞̭̯͘N͓̮̲̥̯̭̺͇͝͞È̶͙̻̜̟̱͍̙ͅ.̸̧̭̯̝̪͖͓̙͜** ”

“What? What are you talking abouaa _aaaaaugh_!” The word died out into a scream when the force holding Ian up suddenly slammed him, hard, against the wall. There was a sharp, sickening _crack_ from his right wrist, pinned between his body and the wall, and then - 

He’d heard the phrase ‘blinding pain’ before, but he’d never realized that pain could literally blind you, and deafen you as well, lighting up the injured part like a sunburst and drawing all focus from the other senses.

Alcor only smiled, revealing two rows of razor-sharp teeth.

“No͡t̷ so h͘͟͠i̛la҉̛́rio̸͞u͘͘͡s͠ ͘ n̷̕ǫ̸̛w̵͢,̷͘̕ ̀ i̴s͘ iţ?͞”

“ _Alcor_!”

The demon didn’t even seem to notice Mira. A feeling of immense pressure closed in around Ian, making it hard to breathe, as black brickwork swept across Alcor’s form until he was nothing but a shadow with flaring golden eyes. It was nearly impossible to concentrate through the throbs of dull ache in his head and the fever-hot stabs of agony from his wrist, but Ian tried again to lock eyes with the demon as Alcor’s voice sunk to nearly subsonic levels.

“Í ̀do͡n͟’͜t ͠know w͜hát ͢you’r̵e͢ p̴l͏ànn̡i͠n̛ģ ̛y̧et́, b̡ut ̷s̕t̀ąý̵́ ͘͝ą́wa̵҉͝y͞҉ ̸̛́f͜͝ŕom͟ ̷̴͘Mį͠z͘ar̀.̕ Or̵̀ s͏ḩ̡o̵̴̶u͟l̸d̴̛͝ I ̨҉̡ś̵a̛͟͟y̶̡̛, ͘͡ ‘̣ **S̝̮̀h̵o̝͟o̱͇̳̳̗͉t͔͜i̢̜n̛̲̜̞̼g̜͖̭͚̖͠ ̥͚̪̩͇̭̭͢S̲ͅt̫͔a̠r̷̙̝̠̫̤̰** '̨̳͇̳̙?”

“All right, that is enough.” Mira reached up and grabbed Alcor by the shoulders, staring directly into his eyes. “Put him down, right _now_ , or so help me…”

The look that Alcor gave her, all flaring eyes and bared teeth, would probably have made Ian actually piss himself if it were directed at him, but Mira just looked unimpressed. “Yo͠u҉ ̛h̷av̴e n͟ó̧ ̛͡i̷̧d̸͘e̴͡á͜ ̕ w̢ha͜t ҉I’m ͘s҉avin͢g yo͠u ͞f̨ro͟m̀,” Alcor growled, and Mira put her hands on her hips.

“Oh, you did _not_ just use your big scary demon voice on me. And thanks for the vote of confidence! Do you really think I can’t take care of myself? Can’t make my own choices? Because from here, it looks an awful lot like you’re just beating the shit out of my boyfriend because you’ve decided he’s not good enough for me and I can’t be trusted to make up my own mind!” 

Again, Ian wished he could tell her telepathically just how perfect she was. His mouth didn’t seem to be working for much other than agonized moans at the moment, and he had the distinct feeling that to interrupt now might actually get him killed, but Mira really needed to know just how much of a badass she was.

“You don’t know w͟h̀o̧ ̀he ͠is,̶” Alcor said, and Ian felt that weird, detached irritation flare up again. Now that his head had stopped spinning so much, now that the unbelievable pain in his right wrist had dulled enough to concentrate on other things, it was easier to tell that the feeling wasn’t quite right. It almost didn’t feel like it belonged to him, like it was coming from somewhere outside of him, or from someone else, and the things it was focused on were all wrong. He was trapped at the mercy of one of the most powerful demons in existence, a demon who seemed to have some strange, deep-seated vendetta against him, and he was…annoyed that the demon was using a central eye and a brickwork motif? Yeah, he’d used the same design elements for a bunch of his characters, but that didn’t mean he owned them, and this was definitely not the time to debate copyright with an actual literal _demon_ hellbent on his destruction -

Mira crossed her arms over her chest, pulling Ian out of his thoughts. “Then tell me.”

Alcor only glanced up at Ian, who swallowed hard and tried to force down the twinges of…jealousy? Was that really what this was?

“Look, I don’t -” Ian started, then stopped, biting off the word to mouth ‘ _ouch_ ’ as his wrist throbbed. “I don’t know who you think I am,” he managed, “but I would never hurt Mira. Ever.”

“He’s lying,” Alcor said, without taking his eyes off of Ian. “He àl̶̴w̧áỳ̀s͜͞ lies.”

“Excuse me? I am a reasonably honest person!” Ian winced, clutching his wrist a little closer to his chest. “Ohhhh fuck, oh man, that is definitely broken.”

Alcor’s eyes flared, the oppressive heaviness filling the air again as he took a step towards Ian that, despite the fact that his feet never touched the floor, shook it nonetheless. “You are a l̛̀͞i͟a̛͝r̨̀,̵͞ ̸and a m̵̡͞o͜n̸͡͞s̸͏te͏r͟҉́.҉” He stopped, looking up, and flared his wings dismissively. “And i̶̷ncr̴͡e͝d̶i̧b̕l͏͟ý̢ ̵́ po҉o̧rl͝y ̧dŗe͞ssed.͜”

For some reason, it was the last accusation that cut the deepest. “Hey!” Ian shouted, and then swallowed the rest of his sentence when the air thickened around him until he nearly couldn’t breathe. 

“Okay, _enough_! Alcor, you are going to put Ian down and explain what this is all about, or…” A wicked grin split Mira’s face, and Ian felt his heart leap at the sight. That was his girl, full of creativity and vengeance. “I will dig out my old puppet theatre.”

Despite the golden fire blazing from his glaring eyes, Alcor suddenly looked uncertain. “You w̛ou̵l͝ḑn͠’́t.̛”

“I will!”

Neither of them moved for a long moment, staring each other down. Then Alcor sighed, waving a hand. Ian felt the force holding him pinned suddenly give way, the weightless sick feeling of freefall gripping him for a split second before he smacked against the counter, rolling off and hitting the floor with a solid _thump_ that knocked all the air out of him. 

Mira was beside him in an instant. “Ian! Ian, oh shit, I’m so sorry, did he hurt you? Is anything broken? Can you breathe? Can you -”

“Slow…down,” Ian huffed, and Mira made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. He started to push himself up, and then gave a sharp cry and flopped back down, clutching his wrist. “Ah, _fuck_!”

“Hang on, I’ll make Alcor fix -” Mira started, and the terror that flooded through Ian and seized up his spine was one hundred per cent his own.

“No!” He pressed his lips together until his mouth was just a thin line across his face, squeezing his eyes shut as pain pulsed through him from a host of injuries both small and large. “I don’t even want to know what it’d cost me. Just – just leave me alone.”

Mira’s face fell, and Ian realized, too late, just what he’d said.

“All right,” she said, quietly, straightening up from her crouch. “Can I at least drive you to the hospital, or call you an ambulance before I go? You’re not going to be able to drive with that wrist. And I’ll need to get my stuff from your apartment -”

“No no no!” Ian interrupted himself to whisper a string of curses under his breath. “I just meant – just don’t let him touch me, don’t try to help out, I think – no, I _know_ my wrist is broken, and I think a couple ribs too, so just…don’t touch.”

Mira gave him a strained smile, and Ian was shocked to see actual tears in her eyes. “Whoa, what’s the matter?”

She laughed again, and Ian couldn’t help but laugh too, even though it sent sharp jabs of pain through his chest and he quickly had to stop.

“Sorry, just - you wanted me to leave you alone, and it’s my fault your wrist is broken and – and this is kind of where all my other boyfriends would have -”

“Mira.” Ian put on the most reassuring, least pained smile he could manage, reaching out with his left hand to take hers. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not any of your other boyfriends. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Oh, that’s really sw҉e̕et̡,” Alcor said, voice dripping in sarcasm, and Ian was certain his heart skipped a beat. He’d almost managed to forget that the demon was even there, or at least to convince himself that Mira’s intervention had taken care of things. 

This time, he didn’t try to fight the wave of resentment and anger that swelled up at the sound of the demon’s voice.

"Okay, what is your problem with me?” Ian demanded, pushing his back up against the cabinet until he was sitting upright. It wasn’t much, but it helped. “First you stare into my _soul_ for a bit, then you throw me around like a rag doll until you’ve broken half the bones in my body, and now you’re making fun of my relationship? I don’t even know you! Why do you hate me so much?”

The stare that Alcor turned on him was flat and dispassionate and somehow even more terrifying than the murderous glare from earlier. “You really want to know why I don͞’͡t̛ l͞ik̵ę you?”

Everything about this screamed ‘bad idea’. Ian nodded anyway.

“You t̡riéd͘ t̶o̷ ḑ̢͠e̵st͟r̡̧o̵͏̕y̵͠ e̶̷͠v̶̨̛͝e̴͟͏r̴͡҉y҉͢t̛̕h̵̵́͜i̷̷̶̡n̸̷̶̨͘ǵ̸͡.̵̷̀̀”

“What?” Ian and Mira asked, nearly in unison, and Alcor laughed.

“Oh, come on, it wasn’t t̴̢̕̕h̶̀͜͡͞ą̷͢͠͠t̷̴ ̴̡͢͢͝ m̸a͡ny l̴i͟fet̵im͠es ̨àgo̷!͟ Of course, you were in ą͠ s͘͢͝t̴͏a̶t̀͝e ̧of͘͢ ͢c͘͢͢o̡͟m͏̷͟p̕͡͡l҉̶ete͘ nǫ͜͠ne̡̢x҉͘i̸s̨̡͟ţ̨͡e̵̡n̵͜c͠͡ę ̴͟ f͘or ͏m̡o͏s҉t̶ ̢of ͝th̷e̡m,̨ ̢but ̕d͟o̶n’̴t tr̨y̧ t͘o̧ tell̶ me͢ ̀y̕o̶u don͠’̷t ͞ r̛̕͢e͡͞m̢̧̕͜͡e̷̶̡͟m͏҉̸͘͏b̸̴̡͝e͘͏̛͢͠r̸͞!” He darted forward suddenly, putting himself nearly nose-to-nose with Ian, so that all that Ian could see were Alcor’s eyes, the gold spread out across them, what little semblance of humanity they’d held completely lost. “I ͟h̸e̵a̷rd ̴w͢ha͘t̷ yo͢u ́ca͡l̡l͠ed̸ h͟ér͜.͟ D͢o͜ ̡ **n̷̛͢͡҉ǫ͞t̀̀͠͝** ̕͞͡tr̨y ̀tǫ ̡t̕e҉l͏l ̡me ͢yo̸u̕ don̨’t ̀r͞e̶me҉m͟be͝r.”

“Remember _what_?”

Alcor ignored him. “Yơu̵ ͏ẁ̸̢̕͠į̶̀͟l҉̴͝l̸͞͠ ̡͞ l̀ea̶ve̷ ͝h́er ͟al̸on͝e. ͢You will not tơù͢҉c͘h͜ ͟ her. You will not s̶p͞͠͡e̷̕̕aķ ҉͞to̕͟͞ her. As far as she is concerned, you will d́i̡s̛͡à͝͡p̢͢pe҉a̡ŗ̢͜. ̸̧͞”

Ian tried to push himself backwards into the cabinet, wishing he could phase through solid wood, as a wave of pure demonic power flowed over him and through him, like someone had taken a sandblaster to his soul. Some tiny, distant part of him, a part that wasn’t cowering helplessly in the face of certain death and complete obliteration, screamed in rage and defiance and just a little bit of loss, but that part was small and easily ignored.

“Mizar̕ i̶s ͘ **m̷̨͉̼͉̕í̸̠̝̳͈ǹ̷͖̦͝e̘͖͔͠ͅ -** ”

"A- _hem_.”

Ian didn’t dare look away from the death glare Alcor had fixed on him, but he could imagine the look on Mira’s face, and barely managed to bury the urge to grin.

“ _What_ was that?” Mira continued, when Alcor didn’t look away from Ian. 

A hint of annoyance wormed its way into the demon’s voice as he said, sharply, “Your s͢o̸ul̶ i͢s ̢ m͏͘͡i̸҉n͝e͜,̕ ̷͘Mabel. Y͞oú ͡b҉el̨ong̀ ̡t͞o m̨e̷.”

From somewhere behind Alcor, Ian heard Mira suck in a sharp breath.

“I’m not Mabel.” Her voice was small and defiant. “But if I were, I think I’d probably tell you that you’re acting like – like – like a total _demon_.”

Alcor blinked. When he opened his eyes again, the gold had begun to retreat back into his irises. He shifted backwards, the choking, stinging waves of power drawing back as well, as his expression changed from inhuman fury to horror. 

“N̸o͢,” he said, taking a few steps back (which dimly registered to Ian as strange; hadn’t he been floating? Why bother with taking steps at all?) and looking from Ian to Mira with the same stricken expression on his face. “Ņo, I̶ -͘ ͢I͠ ͞d́idn’ţ meąn͘ ͢-”

He moved towards Mira, and shot backwards when she flinched.

"Y͡o̶u͡’re ̸not̴ M̕a̢bel." He turned back to face Ian, and all the anger and terror drained out of Ian at the sight of the expression on the demon’s face. "A̵ǹd yo͝u̵’r̴e ́n̕ot ̧-"

Whatever Alcor had been about to say, he bit it back. “I’m s͜o̷r͠r̵ý,” he said, instead, and snapped his fingers. Ian swallowed a shriek when blue flames sprang up over him, but they didn’t burn. In fact, they felt a lot like sinking into a warm bath, and when they died away, his ribs didn’t sting when he moved or breathed too deeply. He gingerly prodded his right wrist with his left hand, and when it didn’t instantly bring tears of pain to his eyes, he risked rotating it. No pain. It was healed like it hadn’t ever been broken.

Ian looked up, to see Mira staring at a patch of empty air with an expression like she was seeing into another dimension. Alcor had vanished, leaving nothing but a faint smell of sulphur and, for some reason, pine trees.

Ian pushed himself to his feet, hurrying over and stopping just short of taking her hand. “Mira?” he asked, instead, and she shook herself all over, turning to him like someone just thawed out from being frozen solid and giving him a weak smile.

He wasn’t surprised, much, when she threw her arms around his middle and gripped him like she was trying to squeeze the air out of his lungs, though he did feel a rush of relief that he decided he wasn’t going to examine too closely as he pulled her close. He was alive, and she was still here, she still wanted him to hold her. That was enough for him for now.

But he could already feel that, sooner or later, he’d have to find out who he’d been and what he’d done to make one of the most powerful demons on Earth carry a grudge against him across lifetimes. Whether he really wanted to know or not.

It took him longer than he’d ever want to admit to realise that he was shaking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation, ableist language, existential angst, and one really bad pun.

The moment Mira had walked into the sole lecture hall at the community college, Ian had known she was going to be important. He hadn’t been sure how, exactly. It was just a feeling, like the change in the wind in October or April, like the faint sense of meaning that clung to treasured heirlooms, and it had punched him in the gut before he even got a good look at her face.

She had been ten minutes late, flushed and breathing hard like she’d been running, and as she’d tried with little success to shut the door silently behind her, Ian had noticed that she had stars in her thick, glossy black hair. She’d turned to look around the classroom, and he’d raised a hand, pointing to the empty seat beside him. The smile she’d shot him in silent thanks was bright and dazzling and stone-cold terrifying. Terrifying, because it had shot through him like a cupid’s arrow and nearly stopped his breath. He didn’t know her, didn’t know anything about her, but he’d been instantly sure he’d do anything for that smile.

“Hi,” she’d whispered, as she’d slipped into the empty seat and shrugged off her coat. Her dress was a rainbow of pastel frills, candy-coloured (and –shaped) jewelry dangling from her ears and around her neck. Up close, the stars in her hair were obviously hairclips, trailing rainbow-enameled chains. She’d pulled a floral-patterned folder from her bag (which was shaped like a cartoon rabbit, and how adorable was that?) and shot another deadly smile in Ian’s direction that had made his insides turn to liquid. “What’ve I missed?”

“Not much. We’re just going over the syllabus.” Ian had watched her tuck her hair thoughtfully behind one ear, and slid his copy of the syllabus across the long table in front of them. “Here, you can share mine for now and grab your own copy on the way out of class.”

She’d looked up at him with wide, liquid brown eyes, and smiled, and holy shit, this was either love at first sight or oncoming psychosis, because he could swear that for just an instant, she’d shimmered like a constellation. “Thanks. Mira Ramachandran,” she’d whispered.

“Ian Beale,” he’d whispered back. “I like your hairclips.”

She’d grinned. “I like your bow tie.”

Ian had been suddenly, intensely glad that he’d chosen to dress up for the first day.

(It had taken him two weeks to work up the courage to ask her out for coffee after class. It had ended up being a moot point, as she’d asked him first.)

…

When Mira woke up at two in the morning, heart pounding from a nightmare she couldn’t remember, the other side of the bed was empty and there was a light on in the living room.

“Babe,” she sighed, padding into the living room on bare feet and squinting against the dim light. Ian started, looking up from the book he’d been studying with a guilty expression. “It can wait ‘til morning. Come back to bed.”

Ian set the book down beside the armchair he was sitting sprawled out in, carefully sliding in a slip of paper to mark his place. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said quietly.

Mira glanced down at the paperback, its cover’s cheery, colourful block lettering proclaiming ‘Past But Not Gone: What Reincarnation Means For _You_!’ “You’re gonna give yourself an ulcer,” she said gently, and Ian flushed. “Hey, if you really can’t sleep, I just finished a good mystery. You’re welcome to borrow it.”

“Thanks, but -”

“Ian.” Mira cut him off before he could offer any of the excuses or justifications she knew were coming. “You’re not going to solve it by staying up until you fry your brain cells.”

Ian glanced down at the book, biting his lower lip, and Mira walked over to wrap her arms around his shoulders. “Look, I know you. It doesn’t matter who you were. You could have been…a military dictator, or a cannibal serial killer, or a US congressman.” She faked an exaggerated shudder, feeling a little glow of triumph when that pulled a small smile out of Ian. “But you’re not any of those people now. You’re Ian Thomas Beale. You’re my boyfriend.” She leaned over and gave him a smooch on the very tip of his nose. “And you’re a good dude. Who seriously needs his beauty sleep.”

There was another smile, faint, but there. Mira allowed herself a moment to relish her victory before Ian asked, “But what about Alcor? He was really upset, and – I don’t want to be a wedge between you and someone who’s so important to you -”

Mira waved the question away. Now was definitely not the time to admit that she was a little uncertain on that front herself, or that she hadn’t actually seen Alcor in the week since his disastrous introduction to Ian. “He can grow up and stop being such a baby about it. I’m a grown woman, I can date whoever I want. And…he cares about me. He wants to see me happy. He’ll back off.”

Ian still looked downcast, so Mira balled her right hand into a fist and smacked it into the palm of her left. “And if he doesn’t, then I’ll just have to knock some sense into him.”

Ian snorted, and Mira tried to cover her pride with a scowl. “What, you don’t think I can kick the most powerful demon in existence’s butt?”

Ian reached an arm around her waist and pulled her close against him. Mira hummed in approval, throwing one leg over his so that she was straddling his lap, and leaned down for a kiss. He pulled away only when they were both breathless, giving her a crooked grin as he rested a warm, steadying hand on the small of her back. “I have absolutely no doubt that you could kick the most powerful demon in existence’s butt.”

“Well, good,” Mira said, leaning down to kiss him again. “So long as we’ve got that straight.”

…

Ian had tried to point out stars and constellations by name, but had quickly given up when he’d discovered that by ‘stargazing’ Mira literally meant ‘gazing at the stars’, and that she was perfectly content to snuggle up beside him and watch the Milky Way slowly flow by overhead in silence.

They’d been lying like that for at least half an hour when she’d sighed contentedly and asked, “Doesn’t it make you feel small?”

“You mean remind me of my ultimate cosmic insignificance?”

Mira had laughed, crystalline and bright, a laugh like the sound stars would make if they could be heard by human ears on a planet millions of miles away. “Sure, if you want to be super depressing about it.”

Ian had thought about it. And then thought about it some more, contemplating the cool night breeze that had wafted over his face and the prickle of the grass through the blanket they’d been lying on and the dizzying array of distant pinpricks of light overhead, or, if you turned your thoughts the right way, below.

“No,” he’d said, at last, watching Venus wink different colours. “No, it makes me feel more…” He’d searched vainly for a word that would adequately describe the vast, almost cosmic sense of the world beyond himself, and settled on, “connected.”

“Huh?”

“Like – like everything fits into place. Even me. Like cogs. Everything moves because of everything else. It all works. And maybe I could see how, if I knew how to look.”

The calm night quiet had suddenly been deafening. Ian had forced a laugh. “Pretty dumb, right.”

“No,” Mira had said, her voice uncharacteristically serious, and he’d felt her fingers brush against his as she’d twined their hands together. “It’s kind of reassuring, actually.”

Ian had smiled and given her hand a squeeze. He’d just been turning his head to face her when a streak of light had flashed across his peripheral vision. Mira had gasped in delight, shaking his arm and pointing up into the sky.

“Make a wish!”

“I get to see a shooting star every day. I’ve got everything I could wish for.”

Even in the dark, he’d been able to see Mira roll her eyes, even though there had been a smile on her face. “Ugh, you are such a sap,” she’d teased.

“Really?” Ian had shifted a little closer, unable to keep from grinning in anticipation as he’d said softly into her ear, “Is that why you’re so… _stuck_ on me?”

Mira’s groan had been instant and loud and affronted, like she couldn’t believe he’d just said what he’d just said. Exactly the response Ian had been hoping for. He’d burst into laughter as she’d shoved him away.

“That was totally uncalled-for and you should be ashamed of yourself!”

“For what? Being hilarious?”

“You want hilarious, mister, I will show you hilarious!”

Ian had realized a moment too late what the gleam in Mira’s eye meant. “What are youo _oohhhhhh nooo_ no don’t touch me _don’t_ -”

Mira had wiggled her fingers gleefully, and pounced.

It hadn’t taken more than about a minute of tickling before Ian was breathlessly crying, “Okay okay okay _no more puns_!” in between howls of laughter.

…

Dipper hadn’t been this nervous about approaching a mortal – uh, about visiting somebody - since Mabel had first started dating Henry. In fact, he might actually be just a tiny touch more nervous than he had been with Henry, considering that Henry hadn’t, metaphysically speaking, ever tried to kill Dipper’s family and wipe out the entire Earth (and nearly succeeded). _  
_

_This is for Mizar,_ Dipper reminded himself, as he watched from the mindscape as his human target stared thoughtfully down at the drawing table in front of him, gnawing absently on the end of his pen, blissfully unaware of the demon hovering over his shoulder only a dimension away. _For Mizar,_ he reminded himself again, steeling himself before he popped into the plane where humans could see, leaning in over the drawing table. “What’re you working on?”

Bi- _Ian_ , she’d called him Ian – reacted almost instantly, giving a high-pitched yell and throwing himself backwards in his chair, which promptly toppled over, sending him tumbling to the ground. Dipper watched with a grin on his face as – _Ian_ – lay flat on his back, staring wide-eyed at the studio ceiling and trying to catch his breath. Okay, so that _was_ pretty funny.

“ _Ow_ ,” Ian gasped, slowly straightening up. He caught sight of Dipper again, and his face fell like a skydiver who, mid-jump, found that the ripcord meant to release his chute had just come off in his hand.  “Wh- what are you doing here?”

“I came to say sorry!” Dipper said, the false cheerfulness in his voice grating on his own ears. “We kind of got started off on the wrong foot, and I wanted to make it up to you.”

Ian looked pointedly down at the chair he was currently lying on, then up at Dipper, who tucked his wings in a little closer to his sides out of embarrassment. “Uh. Yeah. Sorry about that.” He cast around in a blind panic for some kind of conciliatory gesture. Humans gave gifts, didn’t they? “Here, have an inside-out hamster!”

He snapped his fingers, and the little creature burst into being perched on Ian’s chest, its tiny exposed skeletomuscular system undulating and pulsing as it snuffled its snout into the front of Ian’s t-shirt. It was a pretty masterful little creation, if Dipper did say so himself; it wasn’t easy to turn a living thing inside-out and still have it function as intended.

Ian’s eyes were almost perfectly round as he stared, frozen, at the hamster on his chest. That was good, right? He was surprised. And probably impressed by Dipper’s craftsmanship, since after all, it was pretty impressive. But he wasn’t saying anything. Oh no, why wasn’t he saying anything? Didn’t he like it? Was it too soon for Dipper to be giving presents? _Why hadn’t he talked to Mizar before he’d come here this was an absolute disaster –_

Ian gingerly brought one hand up to touch the hamster’s head, breaking into a smile when the little creature snuffled into the palm of his hand. “Wow. Look at that musculature! I am gonna be drawing _you_ ,” he said to the hamster, which gave no sign of acknowledgement that he’d said anything at all.

Dipper realized that he was fluttering his wings nervously and had to shake them back into line. “Do you like it?”

“Like it?” Ian cradled the little creature in one hand, pushing himself up to a sitting position with the other. “This little guy’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” He booped the hamster on the nose with one finger, and grinned. On some plane that humans couldn’t see or feel, his aura flared a brilliant cerulean blue. “Actually, he’s pretty cute in a macabre kind of way. What’s he eat?”

Dipper didn’t respond. They’d – and he’d – and he wanted to know what it _ate_! Henry had _never_ asked what the presents Dipper brought him ate! He’d never _kept_ them!

With that realization came a burst of annoyance, why _hadn’t_ Henry ever kept Dipper’s gifts, they were clearly superior to the boring presents of things like ties and books that everyone else had always got him. Dipper pushed it aside. It was far too late to worry about now, and besides, he had a sinking, crawling feeling that he’d had this conversation with Mabel once or twice, a very long time ago. Humans didn’t, as a rule, like being given inside-out animals or living candy or anything at all that wouldn’t stop screaming.

And the man who Mizar had called Ian was looking down at the hamster which he’d moved into his lap with an expression of fascinated delight. As Dipper watched, he peered at it from several angles before tentatively stroking its back, breaking into a broad grin when the hamster flopped down contentedly in his lap. “I guess I have an inside-out hamster now. You need a name, little guy. What do you think of…hmmm, you know, for some reason I want to call you Stanley?”

Nope. Dipper couldn’t do this. Not even for Mizar.

“N҉o,” he said sharply, snapping his fingers again. With a squeak, the hamster flew apart into its component atoms, returning to a state of absolute nothingness. There was a soft clap of thunder as the air rushed back in to the space the hamster had occupied moments before, and Bi- _Ian_ , dammit - jumped. He looked up at Dipper, brow furrowing as he opened his mouth, clearly about to ask what had gone wrong, but Dipper waved a hand and Ian clapped a hand over his mouth as his tongue tied itself in a knot. “Yoúr h̷a͜ms̡tȩr̨ pr͡i̕vil͢e͡ǵes͡ hàv͢e͝ ͏juśt b͘een ̴ r̷̡è̡͜v͞҉o̸͝k̡͏͏e̛͜d̕.̡̛”

Thankfully, Dipper remembered to untie Ian’s tongue before poofing out to a little archipelago where, he was pretty sure, there was still a mermaid embassy where he could get a decent demon-strength margarita. 

…

A few weeks before she mentioned to Ian that there was someone she wanted him to meet, Mira had started to move her stuff into Ian’s apartment.

She’d started small, leaving a toothbrush and deodorant in his bathroom. Then her shampoo and conditioner had turned up in his shower, her razor on the edge of the tub, face wash and moisturizer and some kind of clay thing that you were apparently supposed to use on your face colonizing the shelf above the sink. The couple of changes of clothes she’d brought over just in case, simple t-shirt and skirt combinations, had swelled into a poofy rainbow overtaking his closet full of plaids and tasteful black. Giving her half of a drawer in his dresser turned into him cursing at a jammed boxer drawer,  having to yank out a lacy, polka-dotted bra and six or seven pairs of pastel-coloured panties, wedged up in behind it from the overflowing drawer underneath, in order to get it to open.

“Are you moving in?” he’d asked sarcastically, when he’d opened up the cupboard above the stove to grab the tin of instant coffee and been met with an assortment of herbal teas with names he couldn’t pronounce.

Mira had looked up from the eggs she was scrambling with an unusually serious expression and asked, “Do you want me to be?”

It had taken Ian nearly a full minute to respond. He shut the cupboard door carefully, and said, “If we’re going to try to fit all your stuff into this apartment, we’re going to have to have an actual plan for where to put it all, instead of this haphazard -”

Mira had interrupted him by throwing her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest. He couldn’t tell, as he put his arms around her, but Ian was pretty sure she was smiling.

They’d been in the middle of cleaning out Ian’s storage closet, making a space for more of her things, when she’d suddenly snorted and then asked, “Oh my gosh, what the heck are these?”

Ian had glanced over at the stack of papers Mira was holding and laughed out loud. “Where did you find those?”

“They were all stuffed in this folder. Seriously, do you ever throw anything away?”

Ian reached over and took the pile of drawings Mira had unearthed. “Oh wow, this is a treasure trove! Look at this!”

Mira glanced at the doodle he held up of a bear with eight heads and a mass of spidery limbs menacing a poorly-proportioned, stiff-looking human figure, and wrinkled her nose with a smile. “Apparently some things never change.”

Ian set the spiderbear aside, flipping through the stack of drawings with a combination of horrified embarrassment and delight. Monsters and malformed humans leapt and roared from the pages as he shuffled them, drawn by an amateurish but clearly enthusiastic hand. “Alcor’s top hat, these are even worse than I remember. Wait, what’s -”

He stopped, pulling out a handful of pages different from the others. Instead of human or nominally animal forms, these were densely packed with geometric shapes, like elaborate mazes with no entrance or exit. For some reason, the sight of them made his stomach flip uneasily, like walking up a flight of stairs in the dark and thinking there’s one more step when in fact you’ve reached the top, or walking past a place where you used to live and seeing only a gap where your house had stood.

Mira let out a low whistle, pulling a page covered in rectangular prisms from the smaller stack of papers in Ian’s hand. “Are these even yours? This looks nothing like the stuff you draw, and that signature isn’t -”

“Oh, they’re mine,” Ian said, shortly, flipping past a forest of Escherian interlocking stylized pine trees. “Yeah, this was…it was probably a good thing I got interested in animation when I did.”

“What do you mean? These are so cool!” Mira pulled out a page of nested perfect equilateral triangles, peering at the bottom right-hand corner. “Wait, this one’s got a different signature.”

“That’s my name,” Ian said, tucking away the page he was holding and taking the page of triangles from Mira with a frown. For a moment, the parallel lines seemed to swim, radiating off of the page, before he shoved it on the bottom of the pile in his hand, out of sight. “They all are.”

“Really? It doesn’t look like your name. It doesn’t even look like English.”

“That’s because it’s not. It’s Atbash.” When Mira gave him a blank look, Ian sighed. Story time, then. “Look, I was really into codes and secret messages and stuff when I was younger. When I was fourteen or so, I had _biiig_ plans that I was going to do a whole bunch of these and spread them everywhere – mostly I think I was thinking of doing graffiti, but also posting paper versions anywhere I could stick one, mailing them to art galleries and museums and collectors, just spreading them all over the city, and I’d sign my name in a different code on each one. Eventually, some clever person would come along and figure out that they were all connected, decode all the signatures and find out that these mysterious works of art were all mine, and then…”

He shrugged, tight and short, wishing intensely that Mira had never dug these drawings out. He definitely wasn’t telling her the whole story, not now, maybe not ever if he could help it. “I’m not sure what the end goal was, honestly. Be famous, make lots of money off my art, maybe take over the world. You know. Artist stuff.”

Mira had laughed at that, but she’d still looked worried. “That sounds really cool. Why are you so prickly about it?”

Ian shrugged again, and dropped the stack of papers on top of the pile of drawings. “High school…wasn’t awesome for me. I was sort of a weird kid already, and being obsessed with all this esoteric stuff didn’t really help, and…it’s just…bad memories, you know?”

Mira shot him a humourless half-smile. “Oh, I know. ‘High school wasn’t awesome for me’, he says to the brown girl who dresses like she rolled in the contents of a candy store.” Her smile grew, and she looked up to meet Ian’s eyes. “Did I tell you that in seventh grade I did an entire social studies project on how I wanted to overthrow the government and instate a licorice king and gumdrop queen so that I could be the marshmallow princess?”

Ian laughed, caught off-guard by the mental image. “You’d make a marvelous marshmallow princess.”

Mira cut a mock curtsey. “You may kiss my ring,” she said regally, extending her right hand, and Ian chuckled. With a deep bow, he took her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. He looked up, met her eyes, and winked, before blowing a raspberry against the back of her hand.

Mira gave a surprised giggle and swatted him with her free hand as he pulled away. “You’re terrible!”

“That’s me!” Ian agreed brightly, straightening up to plant a real kiss on Mira’s lips. “Mmm. You’re definitely sweet enough to be a candy monarch.”

“Flatterer,” Mira muttered into his mouth. “You’ll be a dreadful king-consort when I take the peanut-brittle throne, always telling me what I want to hear.”

“You think I wouldn’t quietly rule the country from behind the peanut-brittle throne? Stardust, you wound me.”

Mira gave a noncommittal hum, pressing forward to kiss him a little more deeply, and then pulling away. “So what _was_ your plan for when somebody figured out all the mystery art was yours?”

“What? I told you, I didn’t have -”

Mira cut him off with a laugh. “That is the best joke that you’ve ever told me. Ian, I’ve known you for long enough to know that where you’re concerned, there is _always_ a plan. You never do anything you haven’t thought through at least like fifty zillion times. So what was the plan for the art?”

“Well…” Ian stopped, and ran a hand through his hair, looking around for anything to settle his gaze on other than her face. Inevitably, almost as though drawn by some kind of strange gravity, his eyes came to rest on the pile of drawings. “They were supposed to be…like the Voynich manuscript, or the Beale ciphers, or one of those other mystery texts that are still confusing people after however many years. I mean, these drawings are full of mathematical riddles that I thought it would probably take somebody other than me forever to even notice, let alone crack.” He scowled down at the pictures. “Of course, they look pretty childish now, but that was the idea, anyway.”

A puzzled frown crossed Mira’s face. “What, so they were just supposed to be unsolvable? Why bother making them a mystery at all, then? What did you think would happen if somebody actually managed to figure them out?”

Ian had met her eyes, and realized that there was no way she was going to back down. The truth was coming out, sooner or later, whether he liked it or not.

He had been suddenly certain he was going to throw up.

“I don’t know,” Ian said shortly, turning away and starting to roughly pack drawings back into the portfolio he’d been looking through.

“Babe,” Mira started, in a tone he recognized as her ‘I am too cute to be resisted’ voice. Ian zipped the portfolio shut, the harsh sawing sound cutting off whatever else she’d been about to say.

"I’m going to put these away," he said, straightening up and hoisting the portfolio under one arm. Behind him, he heard Mira scrambling to her feet, and added, more sharply than he’d really intended, "Don’t follow me, I’ll be right back."

He’d made it into the storage closet and managed to shut the door behind him before dropping the portfolio and pressing the heels of both hands hard against his eyes, trying to take deep breaths, focus on the feeling of the air filling his lungs, the rise and fall of his chest, the steady thump-thump-thump of his heart. Trying to ground himself. 

After a few minutes of struggling to breathe steadily, to keep his thoughts from racing out of control and his heartbeat with them, the moment of desperate panic had slowly faded, leaving Ian feeling shaky and hollow in its wake. He leaned back against the door with a thump, letting himself slide down it until he was sitting on the floor with his back pressed against the door. He didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at the shelves in front of him and trying not to hyperventilate. It felt like hours, but it might only have been minutes.

He couldn’t explain. But he couldn’t keep this from her. There was no way Mira didn’t know, now, that something was wrong. She wouldn’t leave well enough alone until she found out what it was. Trying to hide the truth from her would only hurt her, make her feel like he didn’t trust her. But if there was one thing that Ian knew, it was that she wasn’t going to like that truth.

One way or another, his own personal brand of insanity was going to drive Mira away for good.

…

Mira thankfully hadn’t brought up the portfolio incident until much later that night, when they were both in bed. Lying in the dark, Ian heard her voice say, softly, from beside him, “I’m sorry about this afternoon. I didn’t mean to stick my big fat nose in -”

“Your nose isn’t big or fat, it’s perfectly proportional and adorable.”

Mira had given a little huff of laughter at that. “Liar. It’s beaky and I hate it.”

“You shouldn’t. It suits you.”

“Are you saying I’m nosy?”

Ian raised an eyebrow. “I’m not saying you’re not.”

About half a second later, a pillow had flown out of the dark and smacked him in the face. “Ow!”

"Quit whining, you deserved that."

Ian laughed quietly, fumbling around for the pillow, which he tossed gently back over at Mira. “Oh, sure, blame the victim.”

Mira didn’t answer, only giving a cursory groan and rolling over. Ian waited a few minutes, staring up at the ceiling lamp in the dark, but she didn’t say anything more.

He was just starting to fall into the haze of unreality that came just before sleep when her voice jolted him back awake. 

"Why are you so bent on avoiding talking about it?"

"Maybe because I’m _trying_ to sleep?” 

Mira was quiet, and Ian slapped a hand over his mouth, hissing a quiet curse into his palm. That had come out far sharper than he’d intended. “Sorry, stardust. Long day, and all that.”

"It’s fine." Mira rolled over again, onto her side, facing Ian. Even in the dark, he could tell her eyes were fixed on him, huge and dark and unreadable. "You don’t have to tell me. I just know that whatever it is, it’s bothering you more than you want to admit. And…I love you. So if it would help to talk about it -"

"No," Ian said, shortly. The harder he stared at the ceiling lamp in the darkness, the more it seemed to dissolve into the shadowy ceiling around it, only visible out of the corner of his eye. "Look, I told you it’s a bad memory because it’s in the past, and I wanted to leave it there."

Mira didn’t speak for so long that Ian started to wonder whether she’d actually dropped it, if she’d given up and gone to sleep. He thought he could still feel her eyes on him in the dark, but he stared resolutely at the ceiling.

"In sixth grade, Alyssa Sherman caught me talking to - myself in the second-floor bathroom and told everyone in our grade that I had an imaginary friend."

Ian turned to look over at Mira as she continued to talk, as though she were alone in the room, her voice quiet but steady. “Everyone already thought I was weird because of the way I dressed and the way I looked and my mother’s Sight. After Alyssa spread that rumour, everybody thought I was a freak, a psycho, or if they were being nice, just an immature little kid who couldn’t handle reality. I didn’t have any friends for the entire three years of middle school.” 

Ian rolled over and kissed her, cutting off anything else she might have been about to say. “You know, we could probably track down this Sherman kid and -“

"Ian." There was a hint of amusement alongside the exasperation in Mira’s voice. "I didn’t tell you that so you’d feel sorry for me or swear bloody vengeance on my sixth grade bully! I just wanted you to know that…oh, I don’t know. That I get it? That you’re not the only person who had a sucky high school experience? That it’s okay to talk about it, and I’m not gonna judge you?"  

Ian didn’t respond.

He heard the covers rustle as Mira shrugged, rolling onto her back. Her voice had lost the note of laughter, turning almost melancholy, when she said, “Maybe just that it’s okay for it to still hurt, even years after everybody says you should’ve gotten over it.”

It might have been because of the dark, lending a feeling of secrecy, almost anonymity. Perhaps it was because of the confessional air that Mira’s story had given the darkened room, or even the warm security of the tiny distance between them, so easily bridged with a touch or a word or a kiss. 

Ian looked over, trying to trace Mira’s profile in the dark, and knew with a sudden, unshakeable certainty that he could turn over and go to sleep now, and she’d never ask him again. For a moment, it was tempting. But…it wouldn’t solve anything. She’d always be wondering, worrying whenever something went wrong, like it inevitably would. And he’d always be trying to hide from her, always be holding something back. He’d always be lying to her.

_If I lie to her, I’m going to lose her._

He had to turn away, looking up at the ceiling as he said, “When I was fourteen I tried to kill myself.”

In the silence that followed, he realised that this was the first time he’d ever said those words out loud.

When Mira finally spoke, her words were slow, careful, deliberately chosen. “What made you want to do that?”

Ian couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s almost word-for-word what the psychiatrist asked me, you know that?”

"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to -"

"It’s fine." Ian called up a happier memory. "Do you remember that time we went stargazing and you asked if the night sky reminded me of my utter cosmic insignificance?"

"Um, I asked if it made you feel small. The cosmic insignificance thing was all you." Ian took the faint teasing note in Mira’s voice as a good sign, but he still didn’t look over at her.

"Exactly. Honestly, the night sky used to be just about the only thing that _didn’t_ remind me of it. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how relatively tiny I am, we all are, in the grand scheme of things. How little time we get and how little we can do in that time, how much we’ll never understand or even know that we don’t understand. Everything we are and everything we do is just a miniscule drop in an impossibly vast ocean and it only causes the most infinitesimal of ripples that disappear forever in a matter of only instants compared to the lifespan of the universe and we’re just - so - _helpless_ -“

"Babe," Mira said, sounding worried, and Ian realised he’d balled his hands into fists.

"Anyway. That’s the kind of thinking that got me diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at age fourteen. Of course, spending all that time reading about unsolvable coded documents from a thousand or more years ago probably didn’t really help, but…I used to work myself into these huge panic attacks thinking about this stuff, about how little control I have and how little I or anything I do matter in the face of the entire universe and…sooner or later, you start to wonder, if you really matter so little and everything is so pointless, then why are you even bothering?"

When Mira finally spoke, it wasn’t at all the response that Ian had been expecting. “So that was what the art project was about.”

"Art project? Wh- Oh!  Yeah. Yeah, that was the plan. Make something to last, something that would still be stumping people thousands of years in the future. Something bigger than me." He sighed. "And then clock out."

Mira shifted forward, curling up against his side. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

"Yeah, well, thank Rosa. She found out what I was planning and told my parents. I was locked up in inpatient for two weeks and hated them all for every second of it, but…" He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. "Still here! And snuggled up with the most brilliant star in this backwater galaxy."

Mira gave a little ‘mm’ and then fell silent for several minutes. “So who’s Rosa?”

Again, it was not at all the response Ian was expecting, but he couldn’t bring himself to complain. “My best friend since forever. I’ve really got to introduce you guys when she gets back from this tour. I think you’ll get along like a house on fire.”

"Tour? Wait - like, _concert_  tour?” When Ian nodded, Mira gasped. “You don’t mean Rosa _Darling_?”

Ian just grinned, knowing it wouldn’t be easy to see in the dark.

"Blood and fire, you know _Rosa Darling_ and you didn’t tell me? You’re the worst!”

Ian had laughed, but it had quickly died away. “You’re really not bothered by this?”

"What are you talking about? I am very bothered that you apparently knew Rosa Darling all this time and never got me an autograph -"

"Not about Rosa."

Mira drew in a breath, and held it. Just when Ian was starting to worry she might pass out, she blew it out again. “You’re not - are you planning on trying again?”

"You make it sound like I’m applying for a job or auditioning for a play or something."

"Oh, shut up, or I’ll tickle you again."

Ian bit back a laugh, raising both hands in surrender as best he could with Mira lying on one arm. “Hey, okay, no need to bring out the weapons of mass destruction.” He took a deep breath himself, his smile fading as he said, “I’m not planning on killing myself. Not really interested in checking out early anymore. But…that doesn’t mean I’m ‘better’. I still get panic attacks, they’re just less frequent and I know how to deal with them better. I still have to go see a therapist every month, and check in with a psychiatrist once a year. I’m doing pretty well keeping busy, but…it could get bad again. Anytime. Without warning. And if you’re not prepared to deal with that…well, then I can’t really blame you, because it’s my brain and I’ve been living with it for twenty-five years, and _I’m_ still not prepared to deal with it.”

He counted two slow breaths in and out, and added, “I won’t be upset if you don’t think you can. If you want to call this off -“

"No." Mira’s voice was quiet but determined. "Absolutely not. Like it or not, Ian Beale, you are stuck with me, abnormally big nose, imaginary friend, and all."

She looked like she was considering whether to say more, but Ian couldn’t bring himself to worry through the crashing wave of relief that swept away the sick dread that had settled at the pit of his stomach. He rolled over on top of her and kissed her, hard, until they were both gasping for air.

"There’s something - somebody - I should tell you about," Mira whispered, when they broke apart, but she still had one hand tangled in his hair and one pressed against his back.

"Are you sleeping with them?" Ian whispered back.

"No, it’s nothing like -"

Ian pressed a kiss to her neck, and Mira broke off with a gasp, her hand tightening in his hair with a sharp tug that sent a shiver racing down his spine. “Then it can wait until tomorrow.”

…

It was much later, when they were both lying curled up together on the edge of falling asleep, that Mira gave Ian’s hand a squeeze and murmured, “You matter to me.”

There wasn’t a good way to put the feeling that swelled in his chest, the warmth that flooded his ribcage and threatened to grow too large for his body to contain, into words. Ian settled for pulling Mira closer against him, and whispering into her hair, “You matter to me too.”


	3. Chapter 3

Mira waited until Ian had gone back to the studio for the evening to work in the revisions to his boards before pulling out the chalk and candles. She took a bag of chocolate-covered almonds from the cupboard, considering them for a moment before walking into the living room and pushing aside the coffee table, clearing a space to draw Alcor’s circle on the laminate fake-hardwood floor. She could have called him with just a few drops of blood (at least, she could when he wasn’t sulking and avoiding her), but she already knew that this was a conversation he was going to try to dodge out of as soon as it started. And while the circle wouldn’t hold him, the sense of obligation might.

Alcor appeared without ceremony, grabbing the bag of chocolate-covered almonds from the centre of the circle and stuffing a handful into his mouth before he even said ‘hello’. He leaned back, lounging in midair, as Mira wrinkled her nose.

"Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to talk with your mouth full?"

Alcor just grinned at her with a mouthful of shark teeth stained with chocolate. 

Mira rolled her eyes. “Rude,” she said, with a smile. “Just like…say, avoiding me for a week?”

The grin vanished off of Alcor’s face faster than the chocolate had into his mouth.

"Oh no you don’t," Mira snapped, as he started to fade from the physical plane. "You ate my chocolate, you’re staying here until you explain just why you’ve been sulking in the mindscape for the past week."

"Oh come on, that’s a dirty trick," Alcor complained, and Mira crossed her arms.

"Yeah, well, I learned from the best. Now spill."

"You know, I didn’t make a deal, I could still leave," Alcor grumbled, going quiet when he saw Mira’s unimpressed look. "Buuuuut I’m not going to."

“Good.” Mira nodded once. “Now what’s going on?”

Alcor’s golden gaze shifted away from her face, around the living room.

“ _Alcor_.” Mira drew in a breath, counted silently to ten, and let it out again, envisioning all of her frustration blowing out of her lungs along with it. Whether or not it actually helped was debatable. “Come on, you owe me this much. I thought we agreed we weren’t going to keep secrets from each other after that time the wyvern nearly killed me?”

“Yeah, we did, but -” Alcor fixed her with an apologetic look. “I can’t tell you.”

Mira crossed her arms and furrowed her brow a little deeper. 

“I mean it! I can’t give you the information you want without making a deal, and trust me, the price is higher than you can pay.”

Mira wasn’t sure if she imagined the weight of phantom chains around her wrists, her ankles, her neck, the awareness flickering away again almost instantly. 

“It’s because of Ian, then?” she said, instead of bursting into tears or screaming at the demon sitting on thin air in the middle of the circle she’d drawn on her living room floor, with chocolate smudged around his mouth and on the very tip of his nose. Neither would do her much good, anyway. Alcor wouldn’t - maybe couldn’t - ever let go of those chains, even if she wanted him to. “You can’t tell me why you took off on me without revealing who he used to be?”

“That’s…basically it,” Alcor admitted. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed. “Look, I know you love him, but please, just be careful.”

“But you can’t tell me what I should be careful _of_.”

Alcor gave her a helpless look. 

“You’ve got chocolate all over your face,” Mira sighed, watching with unimpressed eyes as Alcor’s tongue darted out, far longer than a tongue should be for anything that looked that human, and licked the chocolate from around his mouth. “Missed a spot,” she said, pointing to the smudge on his nose, and he licked it away as well before grinning at her and popping another handful of chocolate-covered almonds into his mouth.

“Could you get those peanut candy-covered ones next time? I like those better.”

“Sure, whatever.” Mira stepped forward, smudging one of the chalk lines with her toe. It was only a formality – she didn’t know if there even was a circle in existence that could hold Alcor against his will – but she didn’t want to be rude to the demon who was her oldest friend. Had been her only friend, for three whole years, she reminded herself as she knelt to blow out the candle in front of her, trying not to remember at the same time that he had, however inadvertently, been the reason she hadn’t had any other friends.  He was trying. They both were. 

She expected Alcor to vanish almost immediately after she broke the circle, but instead, he lingered, hovering tentatively in its centre. “Mira?”

“Yeah?” Mira looked up from the candle to meet Alcor’s worried gaze. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

“Just…I know you’re not too happy with me right now. I know I messed up.” His voice dropped in volume, the faint reverberating echo that always filled it dimming slightly as his shoulders curled inwards. “You were right, I was acting like a total…demon. I shouldn’t have run away, I just – I didn’t know if you would, if you even could, forgive me, and I didn’t want to make things worse -”

“Oh, you big dummy,” Mira sighed, straightening up and holding her arms out wide. “C’mere.”

Alcor shot her a grateful look and darted forward, nearly knocking her off her feet as he threw himself at her. Mira couldn’t help but smile as she wrapped her arms around him, giving him a fierce squeeze and getting a nearly rib-cracking one back.

She wasn’t quite sure what compelled her to do it, but she said, “Pat. Pat.” as she gently patted his back, just between the shoulders. Alcor gave a choked, hiccuping laugh, and even though he couldn’t see it (or maybe because he couldn’t see it), Mira grinned.

"So you’re not gonna start avoiding me again, right?" she asked, mock-sternly, and Alcor gave another strangled-sounding laugh.

"Not a chance." He gave her another squeeze before pulling away, affecting a mischievous grin that didn’t quite match the fond look he gave her. "After all, if you’re gonna insist on playing with fire, _somebody’s_ got to watch your back.”

"Very reassuring," Mira deadpanned. "Go on, get out of here. Don’t you have somebody to cheat out of world domination or something?"

Alcor flashed her a sharp-toothed smirk, tipped his top hat, and vanished, leaving only a spreading scent of pine trees.

Mira caught herself smiling as she blew out the rest of the candles and scrubbed the chalk off the floor. “Geez, Alcor, you’re better than an air freshener,” she said to the empty air, as the smell of deep forests and cool earth slowly suffused the living room.

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard the faintest echo of laughter.

…

Rosa Darling was in the middle of recording when she looked up and saw Ian waving through the window at her from behind Amin, her current sound guy. She smiled back, and went back to singing as he took a seat. After one more verse and a chorus, Amin gave her the sign, and Rosa pulled off the heavy headset and lifted the strap for her guitar over her head. She patted the gelled platinum-blonde spikes of her hair, making sure the headset hadn’t flattened them out, as she opened the door and slipped out of the recording booth.

“Beale!” she said delightedly, resting her guitar in its case before throwing her arms wide for a hug. Ian grabbed her around the middle and scooped her clean up off her feet, spinning her halfway around in a circle as she shrieked before putting her down with an exaggerated groan.

“Oof! Sheesh, dummy, did you put on even more weight?”

Rosa hit him in the arm as hard as she could, savouring his wince. “Nice to see you too, ya son of a sphinx. Y’all look like shit. Sleep much?”

Ian’s smile turned strained, and Rosa felt her eyes widen. “Those dreams again?” she asked, a little more gently, and Ian shrugged.

“It’s just a whole bunch of stuff. What’re you recording?”

Rosa narrowed her eyes, pointing one chubby finger at Ian. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re just tryin’ to get the heat offa yourself.”

Ian shrugged again, looking totally unrepentant. “It’s working, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is,” Rosa admitted grudgingly. “You’re lucky you caught me midway through a new album or I would not be so easily deterred.”

The way Ian grinned made it clear that he knew as well as she did that that was a blatant lie. “Got anything you can play me?”

“Well, it all still needs mixin’, but I’ll give y’all a taste of the single.” She turned to Amin, who was watching them with an unimpressed frown, and asked, “Could you play back the…hm, third cut of ‘Raise the Dead’?”

The song opened with a solitary voice – her own – singing about digging graves. Rosa watched Ian’s face carefully, pleased to see him nodding along slightly as her guitar joined the mix with a growl. “Catchy.”

“Ya think? I feel like it’s missin’ something,” Rosa said, taking careful note of the bags under her best friend’s eyes and the nervous twitch of his fingers that he didn’t seem to notice. “Maybe a heavy electronic bass beat,” she teased, and watched him grimace. “Or maybe a good fiddler.”

Ian rolled his eyes at the pointed look she gave him. “Yeah, I know you and Mom would both love that, but Rose, the duo’s been broken up for ten years, and we both know why.” The smile he aimed in her direction looked apologetic, but Rosa knew from long experience that Ian wasn’t sorry at all about having bowed out when her star had started to rise. “Besides, I haven’t even had time to pick up my fiddle in years. I’m probably way too rusty to play with you.”

Rosa shrugged. “Oh well, worth a try. So to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

“We’ve only got the studio for another ten minutes,” Amin interrupted, sounding impatient, and Rosa rolled her eyes before turning a deceptively mild smile on him.

“I’m satisfied with that last cut if y’all are. We can wrap for the day.”

Amin’s frown grew deeper. “We still don’t have a final cut of ‘Snake Oil’, and you wanted to redo the vocals on -”

“Listen, sugar,” Rosa cut him off, her voice dripping honey that only barely concealed the venom lurking underneath. “My best friend practically since birth just walked into the studio, and we need to talk. If it’s time that’s the issue, we can put off the album another few weeks, pick another single and drop that. If it’s money you’re worried about…well, ya shouldn’t be.Ten minutes of recordin’ lost ain’t gonna break us.” She gave Amin a grin that was little more than bared teeth. “And if ya got a problem with that, just remember, sound crew are replaceable. If you’ll excuse us.”

She gave Amin no time to respond, grabbing her guitar case and dragging Ian after her out into the hall.

“You’re terrifying, you know that?” Ian said, casually, as they started toward the main studio doors, and Rosa snorted.

“Nonsense. I’m adorable.”

Ian looked her up and down, and Rosa knew what he was seeing: five feet nothing of pudgy, platinum-blonde Southern sweetness and iron ruthlessness wrapped in combat boots and a spiked and studded blazer with a patch for her punk-bluegrass act, the Savage Peace, stitched into the back. “Whatever you say, dummy.”

Rosa stuck out her tongue, ignoring Ian’s smirk at the sight of the barbell stuck through it. “So what brings you here? Trouble in paradise?”

“Sort of,” Ian admitted grudgingly, and Rosa nodded, patting his arm sympathetically. “It’s not Mira, we’re fine, but I got to meet her…surrogate brother, and he really doesn’t like me. To the tune that he broke my wrist and a couple of my ribs.”

Rosa gave a pointed look at the complete lack of casts on Ian’s arms.

“Yeah, I know. She got him to fix me up afterwards – I think he felt pretty guilty – but…” Ian trailed off into a shrug, stuffing both hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Fix you up? What is this guy, a mage? Miracle worker?”

Ian leaned in towards her, so casually that a passerby might not have noticed that he was doing it deliberately, and said in an undertone, “Try a demon.”

Rosa forced herself not to react. “Ian Thomas Beale, if y’all are pullin’ my leg -”

“Cross my heart. She’s best friends with Alcor the Dreambender. He’s ‘like a big brother’ to her.” Ian pulled his hands from his pockets to make air quotes with his fingers. When Rosa didn’t speak, struck quite speechless by this revelation, he nodded grimly. “Yeah.”

“That can’t -”

“Yeah. See my problem?”

Rosa nodded, the wave of shock and disbelief that had overtaken her slowly evaporating. “Only you could get yourself into somethin’ like this, Beale.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that statement,” Ian said lightly. “Anyway. I need a favour.”

Rosa stopped mid-step, planting both hands on her hips and glaring at her best friend. “Ohhhhh no. Not again.”

“Oh, come on, there’s absolutely no risk to you this time!”

“Physically or psychologically?”

“Both! I mean neither! I mean -” Ian stopped, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a grimace. When he looked up, it was with an uncharacteristically serious expression. “Look. When Alcor flipped out on me, he said it was because of something I did a few lifetimes ago.”

Rosa rolled her eyes, already clearly able to see where this was going. “Then go see a professional.”

“Rose, you know I can’t afford that! And you’re psychic, can’t you just take a quick peek -”

“All right, first thing, I ain’t _psychic_ , I’m _sensitive_. We’ve been over this. There’s a difference. I can’t – read minds, or find lost cats, _or see people’s past lives_. What I can do is read energies, which makes it one heck of a lot easier to work a crowd but is of _absolutely_ no use when it comes to past lives.” She shot an unimpressed glare into the teeth of Ian’s glower. “And second, all I can tell ya is what I’ve told ya before. Your energy’s weird. And no, I can’t be more specific than that.”

“Thanks anyway,” Ian muttered, slouching forward, and Rosa felt a pang of guilt.

“Is that what’s got ya losin’ sleep this time?”

“Huh?” Ian actually looked surprised, like he hadn’t even considered the possibility. “No. Well, maybe. Mostly it’s been work, you know, lots of deadlines -”

Rosa caught the hand he was vaguely waving in illustration and looked him dead in the eyes. “Ian. Are you havin’ the dreams again.”

For about half a second, Ian looked like he was about to lie, before the fight seemed to drain out of him, leaving only exhaustion behind. “Since I met Alcor. The dreamcatcher’s not helping either.”

Rosa winced in sympathy. “All right. I’ll see if I can’t hook y’all up with a stronger one. But you’ve got to introduce me to Mira! It’s been months, and I still don’t know what she looks like or what she sounds like or whether she’s an axe murderer or -”

“She’s not an axe murderer.”

“So ya say.”

Ian shook his head, but he was smiling. “Fine. I promise, first chance I get. I just haven’t had so many chances, y’know? She’s a busy person, and you were away on tour -”

“Oh, stop makin’ excuses and just introduce me to your damn girlfriend.” Rosa threaded her arm through Ian’s. “Now. Y’all got time for lunch with an old friend?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “Course ya do. Come on. There’s this darlin’ li’l teahouse down the street I’ve been dyin’ to try.”

…

“What do you even see in him, anyway?”

Mira paused for a moment, lowering the bat to look thoughtfully over at Dipper. “He’s sweet.”

“Sweet.” Dipper pulled his claws from the gaping wound in the stomach of the cultist he’d been taking care of, giving Mira a flat look.

“Considerate. He pays attention.” Mira wound up and slammed the bat into the side of the head of a woman who swung a heavy mace crackling with magic at her. “He knows what I like and don’t like, what matters to me, even things I don’t tell him. He pays attention to what I say and do, and he remembers. He just does nice things for me sometimes when I’m least expecting it, and it’s always exactly what I didn’t even know I wanted.” She knocked a man in flowing robes off his feet on the backswing. “He’s always surprising me.”

“None of that is necessarily a good thing,” Dipper pointed out, as he coaxed up the blue fire that was sealing off the exits, a sense of quiet satisfaction pouring through him as the screaming grew more frantic, the individual voices starting to die away.

“It _is_ , though. It means he cares enough that every little detail about me matters to him.” Mira stepped over a prone form, wrinkling her nose at her feet. “Ew. These sneakers are gonna be ruined, it’s impossible to get blood out of canvas.”

“Worry about it later,” Dipper said, distractedly. Where was the cult leader? She’d vanished somewhere in the confusion. 

“And he’s smart. And funny. And he thinks I’m funny. Do you know how rare that is?” Mira ran forward and slammed her bat into the stomach of a robed figure trying to flee, knocking a book from under its arm. She knelt down to scoop the book up, glancing up at Dipper as she did so. “My sense of humour comes, like, at least fifty percent from growing up with _you_ around. Do you even know how many boys I’ve accidentally scared off because of that?”

“Seven. Duck!”

Mira ducked, and Dipper blasted a man who had come up behind her with a jagged sacrificial knife raised while they were talking. A stream of electric blue fire knocked the man from his feet and smashed him against the back wall of the community centre, knocking down two more robed figures in his path. He slumped down against the wall and didn’t move.

Dipper dusted off his hands with a triumphant grin.

“All right. All we have to do is collect the artifacts, and then I think we’re done here -”

“Mom?”

Dipper’s head snapped up at the sound of a high-pitched voice. Beside him, Mira got to her feet, turning too in the direction the word had come from.

One robed figure, smaller than the others, was crouched behind the table set as an altar, the white cloth draped over it now splotched with blood. Another small figure, also robed, but with its hood down, was struggling in the grip of the cult leader. One of the leader’s arms pinned the small girl against her, while the other held the serrated edge of a foot-long breadknife against the girl’s throat. Dipper faintly sensed the fire sealing off the entrances and exits growing into a ring of inferno around the room, roaring flames licking at the ceiling, hot as his temper. There were _kids_ here?

Mira took a step forward, only for the cult leader to tug the knife lightly across the girl’s neck, a few bright drops of blood beading against the blade and dripping down into the collar of the girl’s robe. “Not another step, _Mizar_ ,” the leader spat, shuffling forward with the girl still pinned with the knife to her throat. “I’ll slit her throat right here.”

“Mom, what are you talking about?” the girl gasped, tears forming in her eyes as a trail of glistening snot leaked down from one nostril. “You won’t – we’ve been good! We got the ritual right this time and everything -”

If his blood had been pumping like a human’s, Dipper was sure it would have run cold.

“Shhh,” the cult leader cooed to the girl, stroking her hair gently back from her forehead even as she dug the knife deeper. “I said not another step!” she snapped at Mira, who had shifted towards the altar. “Oh yes, I know about the Twin Stars’ fondness for children. You’re going to let my girls and I leave here unscathed, and we’re going to take the ritual artifacts of Getheniel with us.”

For Dipper, the world went grey –

“Alcor?” Mira said, and it took Dipper a moment to realise that she was shouting. “Alcor! Stop!”

Dipper blinked, and the world righted itself.

The children – children! – were clinging to each other, shaking in clear terror and staring at him with wide and frightened eyes. It was hard to see them clearly, though, because Mira was standing between him and the children, her arms out and a look of furious determination on her face.

A chasm ran through the concrete floor of the community centre, between her feet, a cold wind hissing out of its depths and nothing visible below but darkness. It ran in a jagged line from him straight towards the altar, stopping just inches shy of the children.

The mother who had threatened _her own child’s life_ to save her own skin was nowhere to be seen.

Dipper sagged in midair, his wings beating furiously to keep him aloft.

“I wouldn’t – I couldn’t – I wasn’t going to hurt them -” he babbled, and the look on Mira’s face softened.

“I know that, you big dork, but they don’t.”

Dipper tried to look past her, to the children, but Mira stepped carefully forward, reaching out to rest both hands on his shoulders. “I think the best thing we can do now is just go,” she said softly.

“But – the kids -” 

Dipper started forward, and both girls shot backwards, the older of the two pale as death with blood still flecking her neck, but with steely defiance glinting in her eyes as she pushed her little sister behind her with trembling hands.

"Don’t you dare come near us! You _killed_ our _mom_!”

The flames around the room banked, sputtering and dying with a cough. 

“Come on,” Mira said, still in that same soft, even tone, like she was talking to a frightened animal. 

Dipper shut his eyes, and wrapped his wings around her, blotting out the carnage, the stench of smoke and magic and blood.

…

It was late when Alcor blipped her back into the apartment, late enough that Mira glanced at the clock and seriously debated just taking a nice long bubble bath (after a quick shower to rinse most of the blood off) instead of bothering to try getting some sleep. She finally decided against it, easing open the bedroom door as quietly and carefully as she could, before realising that there was still a light on inside. And sitting upright in bed with his nose in a book -

"Ian?" Mira shoved the door the rest of the way open. "What are you doing up? Don’t tell me you started a mystery and forgot to sleep again."

The smile that crossed Ian’s face as he looked up seemed strangely relieved, in the instant before it disappeared. He dropped the book, throwing back the covers and slipping out of bed. “Mira, you’re all -“

"Oh, this isn’t mine," Mira said quickly, looking down at the blood soaking her front. "I’m all in one piece! You weren’t waiting up for me, were -”

Ian cut her off by grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her into a tight hug.

“Babe?” Mira asked, after a moment. “Um, you’re getting blood all over your pyjamas.”

“They’ll wash,” Ian said shortly, squeezing her tighter. Mira waited another few heartbeats, and when he didn’t show any sign of letting go, leaned forward and put her arms around him as well.

“I think I liked it better when I didn’t know where you were taking off to all the time,” Ian said, finally, and Mira snorted.

“No you didn’t. It drove you totally batty. Do you seriously not remember?”

“I do.” There was another moment of silence, and then Ian added, “It was still better than knowing what could be happening to you and - and not being able to do anything about it.”

Mira pressed her face into the soft fabric of his t-shirt, ignoring the cold slime of half-congealed blood on her cheek.

"As cool as it is to have an actual superhero as a girlfriend…" Ian’s grip tightened, his fingers digging into Mira’s shoulder until they almost hurt. "I  know what being Mizar means. And you shouldn’t have to do this. He shouldn’t be able to _make_ you do this. There’s got to be some way -“

"There isn’t," Mira said, the words coming out a little more sharply than she’d intended.

She pulled back, looking up to meet his eyes, looking for any sign that he understood just how important this was to her. Ian looked away, over toward the door, and Mira grabbed his wrist, drawing his attention back to her. 

"Ian," she said, softly, when he looked down at the blood all down her front instead of her face. "If there were a way to get my soul back from Alcor that wouldn’t kill me, I would have found it by now. I don’t like it any more than you do." She took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax her grip on Ian’s wrist. "But he’s not making me do anything."

"How can you say that? He shows up here, and you drop everything to go do his dirty work!"

Mira shook her head. “If I said no, he wouldn’t make me. He wouldn’t even ask again if I told him to leave me alone. But I’m not going to do that. I might not have a choice about being Mizar, but I’m choosing to use that to make the world a little better, keep it safe, any way I can. And I’m not going to give it up.”

The look Ian gave her was heavy with disbelief, but Mira pushed on.

“There were two kids there tonight, couldn’t have been older than twelve. Their own mother was training them to summon demons for destruction and personal gain. She nearly killed one of them in front of us! I’m not – I can’t turn my back on things like that, when I could be doing something about it.”

For a moment, Ian looked like he was going to argue, before letting out a sigh and dragging a hand through his hair, looking away from Mira’s eyes. “I won’t ask you to.”

Mira scanned his face for any hint of a smile, a shifting gaze, anything at all that would mean Ian was planning some way to weasel out of his own words, but she saw nothing but sincerity. “This is going to happen again,” she said anyway, watching his eyes. “Alcor’s going to show up at the worst possible moment and I’m going to go with him. And you’re not going to know what’s happening or whether it went horribly wrong until – if – I come back.”

A flicker of sadness crossed Ian’s face, but all he said was, “I can’t stop you. I won’t try.” One corner of his mouth quirked up into a half-smile, and he added, “Plus, you know I can’t say no to you when you do the eyes.”

Mira leaned forward again, into the hug, feeling a warmth that made the sticky cold of the blood covering her front bearable. 

"Just promise," Ian started, and then stopped, one hand coming up to stroke her hair.

"Promise?" Mira finally prompted him.

"Never mind. It’s dumb."

"It’s not dumb."

Ian drew a deep, shuddering breath, drawing back to look her in the eyes. “Mira Rachel Ramachandran, promise me now that no matter where Alcor takes you, no matter what you have to do…you’ll come home safe.”

Mira smiled up at him and swallowed hard around the sudden lump in her throat.

"Promise," she said, and gave her boyfriend one last squeeze around the middle. "Now let’s go get out of these bloody things."


	4. Chapter 4

“Babe?” There was a jangle of keys as the door creaked open. “You home?”

Ian jumped up, meeting Mira in the entryway. “Hey, stardust, you’re back later than I expected.” He leaned in to kiss Mira lightly, before she pulled back, kicking off her lace flats and letting them lie where they fell.

“My bus broke down on the freeway.” She sighed heavily, pouting up at him as she slung her purse over a hook in the closet. “You would not believe the day I’ve had. We got six hundred complaints about the new receptionist AI. Six hundred! And I had to field nearly all of them! Apparently people don’t like being referred to as ‘valued mortals’.”

Ian barely managed to smother a laugh, and Mira shot him a dirty look as she dropped her keys on the low dresser by the door. "Oh, you only think it's funny because you didn't have to field angry calls about it all day. And there are swarms of cars around the apartment today and all kinds of furtive people lurking in the courtyard with cameras, and the elevator’s not working, and some complete  _sadist_  drew a smiley face on the out-of-order sign!”

She looked up at Ian, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes, and then flumped forward to rest her head against his chest. “Carry me over to the couch and rub my feet, please,” she mumbled into the front of his white dress shirt.

“I’d love to, but we’ve got a visitor,” Ian said, gently putting Mira back on her own two feet.

"Is that why you’re all dressed up?” She gave his rainbow-printed bow tie a tug, and smiled. “Hey, you’re wearing the one I picked out for you!”

“Yep. Remember I told you you and Rosa would have to meet while she was in town?”

If he’d been boarding this scene, he would have zoomed in on Mira’s eyes widening, and turned the highlights in them to stars. It wasn’t that far from what really happened. "She's here?"

Ian nodded, and couldn’t help but laugh when Mira nearly fell over, grabbing at his arms to keep herself upright. "Blood and fire, Rosa Darling is in  _my_  apartment. Did you – I didn’t do the dishes last night, it’s been nearly a month since I last vacuumed, my hair is a disaster -"

“Hey hey hey, calm down, it’s fine. You’re fine.”

“That’s easy for  _you_  to say, you look like you're going to a wedding! I look like Sayanora Pussycat’s dumpster-diving cousin!” Mira paused, and narrowed both eyes at Ian into an expression she clearly thought was piercing and suspicious. Ian had never had the heart to tell her that it made her look like she’d lost a contact. “Don’t you dare say a word about the tables turning or whatever.”

“I don’t have to, you just said it for me,” Ian said lightly, grinning at the look of dawning outrage on Mira’s face. “I mean it, you look fine. Come have some tea and say hi.”

“I’m gonna get you back for this,” Mira muttered, smoothing down the front of her skirt as she started forward into the living room.

“Suuuure you will,” Ian agreed, and if the faintest trace of sarcasm worked its way into his voice, well, it wasn’t like it didn’t belong there.

Rosa stood straight up from her seat on the couch as soon as Mira walked into the living room. Ian wasn’t sure she even realised she’d meant to get up until she was on her feet. She smiled, and it wasn’t at all the practiced smile she usually put on for interviews or events, not too big or too small, just mischievous enough to be charming. This was huge and warm and seemingly genuine, the kind of smile that Ian knew she reserved for friends and family. She must really be planning to turn on the charm.

And sure enough, in seconds she’d crossed the room, had Mira’s hand in hers and was giving it an enthusiastic pump up and down as Mira stared, starstruck. “You must be Mira! I’ve heard such a lot about ya, Beale can’t shut up about ya for more than the time it takes to draw breath. I must say, he didn’t do ya a lick of justice. You are every bit as charming as he said you’d be and more.”

“Laying on the accent a bit thick, aren’t you?” Ian teased, only for Rosa to shoot him a glare that was pure venom.

“Stars and leylines, Ian was telling the truth about knowing you,” Mira breathed, and Rosa turned that enormous smile on her again.

“He does do that sometimes,” Rosa said, with a wink in Ian’s direction, patting the back of Mira’s hand before releasing it. “Come on, sit down, and tell me all about your darlin’ self.”

“My own best friend doesn’t trust me,” Ian said nonchalantly, pressing a hand to his chest in feigned injury. 

“Not as far as I can throw ya,” Rosa shot back. “Now hush, Mira and I are talkin’. Weren’t you about ta put a kettle on?”

Ian managed with great force of will not to laugh. “Well, I guess I am now. Mira, chai?”

Mira actually jumped. “Oh, uh, no, pomegranate rosehip, please. Or - ooh! Do we still have any of that confetti blend left?”

“I think there’s enough for maybe one or two more steeps.”

“You should try some!” Mira said to Rosa, as Ian walked around the partition into the kitchen. “It’s a dessert tea, pretty sweet, it’s a vanilla hazelnut blend with these little bitty rainbow sprinkles - unless you don’t like sprinkles, I mean I don’t actually know you, but you just seem like somebody who’d appreciate sprinkles.”

“I would love to give it a try,” Rosa said, and Ian was glad the partition meant they couldn’t see him roll his eyes when she said, “If you say it’s good, why, then it must be simply divine.”

He waited in the kitchen by the stove until the kettle boiled, keeping half an ear on the conversation in the living room, listening as Rosa grilled Mira about her creative writing degree, her first novel, her family (father, mother, and five older sisters, none of whom, Ian reflected, he had met yet), and the long list of foods that were improved by the addition of sprinkles (he was, again, very glad they couldn’t see his face when Mira mentioned tacos), and gushed over Mira’s clothes and her stories about her sister the dragon-tamer and about the nightmare that was trying to make a living in self-publishing. She really was laying it on thick, Ian considered, pouring boiling water into three mugs (the one with the Cheshire cat that disappeared when you put hot water into the mug for Rosa, the one with the pattern of bunnies in jumpers and the molded bunny-shaped handle for Mira, and the faded one with the crossword puzzle pattern for himself) and dipping the tea ball into Rosa’s. In a weird way, it was reassuring. Clearly, Rosa wanted to get along with Mira as much as Ian wanted her to. 

“Did he ever tell you about the time he tried out for the football team?” Rosa’s voice asked, from the living room, and Ian nearly dropped the kettle on his foot.

“I thought we agreed to never bring that up ever again. Ever,” he said sharply, sticking his head around the partition. Both girls turned to face him, and burst out laughing, Mira giggling and hiding her mouth behind one hand with a faintly apologetic look in her eyes, Rosa throwing her head back. 

“Oh, come on, Beale, you were cuter than a kitten in a pen full of chicks!” 

“Have you ever actually  _seen_  a pen full of chicks? And no. It was not cute. It was humiliating. For  _them_. That team could have won their way to the national level if they’d had a single person who knew how to use their head for more than just hitting the opposite team with.”

“Oh, you’re just embarrassed because you barely weighed a hundred pounds and had to try to tackle the quarterback.” Rosa held the back of her hand up by her mouth as she stage-whispered to Mira, “It didn’t end pretty.”

“Say,” Ian said, with a glare at Rosa, “Mira, did I ever tell you about Rosa’s days as Li’l Miss Rodeo Princess?”

Rosa’s laughter cut off instantly, her blue eyes widening in horror. “Ian Thomas Beale, don’t you dare _-”_

“I might even have some video somewhere around here,” Ian said casually, grinning as Rosa started to vibrate with obvious rage. 

“You wouldn’t _.”_

“Oh, come on, Rose, you were so  _cute_.”

“I was an infant! I didn’t have a choice!” Rosa ground her teeth. “Fine, you blackmailin’ sonovabitch. No more embarrassing high school stories so long as you keep those tapes confidential.”

“Hey, don’t talk about my mother that way, she gave you your big break,” Ian said, sliding back into the kitchen on sock feet to grab the mugs of tea. “But you got yourself a deal.” He set the Cheshire cat mug down in front of Rosa, handing the bunny mug to Mira and flopping down on the couch between them. “So what should we talk about, now that embarrassing stories from our respective pasts are off the table?”

...

“So that’s your girlfriend,” Rosa said, as Ian held the door to the apartment building open and tried to ignore the flashes of light from the paparazzi in the bushes across the street.

“That’s my girlfriend,” Ian agreed.

“I can see why you hid her from me for so long,” Rosa said, waving to her limo driver as he pulled up in front of the apartment building.

“You two seemed to be getting along pretty well,” Ian commented.

“I think we did, and I do hope we’ll get to know each other better. She’s an absolute peach.”

“Uh oh.” Ian fought down a smile. “Last time you said that about a girl, you nearly ran me up the flagpole for flirting with her. And I know you made a date to take Mira out for mani-pedis before you left. What does this mean?”

Rosa looked up at him, her expression completely neutral. “Beale, I am goin’ to steal your girl.”

Neither of them moved for a moment.

Then Ian let out a snort of laughter, and Rosa broke into a smile. “Yeah. Okay,” Ian laughed, shaking his head. “Get out of here, dummy.”

Rosa waved as she jogged down the short sidewalk to the street and the limo. “Hope you’re ready to show up in the tabloids as my current fling!” she called back over her shoulder, with a wave towards the flashbulbs still going off all along the street.

“What, again?” Ian called back, as Rosa slipped into the limo. 

He waved until the long black car was out of sight.

...

It had been about a month when Dipper was struck by the horrifying realization that he didn’t hate Ian nearly as much as he had when they’d first been introduced.

In fact, the stupid jerk was proving infuriatingly hard to keep hating. Every time Dipper popped in (which was much more often, now; he needed to keep a closer eye on Mira and her boyfriend, after all, or who knew what might happen), Ian was doing something disgustingly normal – making tea, or watching TV and laughing with that horribly familiar cackle at some ridiculous comedy show or the news, or sketching Mira while she lay draped in what had to be an uncomfortable position over the armchair, scribbling furiously in a notebook or scrolling through her dash on her tablet. Either he was really good at hiding his secret evil motives, or he genuinely just didn’t have any.

It was infuriating. But what made it worse was how, every so often, just when Dipper was starting to relax and wonder if maybe he hadn’t been a little too hasty in his judgment after all, a flicker of Bill would shine through and Dipper would find himself right back at square one. There was that awful, obnoxious laugh, for one thing, which would have haunted Dipper’s nightmares if he still had them. There were the occasional non-sequiturs and unfunny existentialist ‘jokes’ that sounded a little too rational to the part of Dipper that knew the world of the visible as nothing more than an illusion crafted within each individual human mind. And, of course, there was the whole thing with the silly straws. 

Some days, Dipper was convinced the whole thing was an act, that there was no ‘Ian’, that Bill’s spirit knew exactly who and what it was and was deliberately trying to drive Dipper crazy. Other days, he wasn’t so sure. And the more frequent his visits to the apartment became, the less sure he was.

Occasionally, Mira would catch him popping in or out, and would shoot a warning glare in his direction. Dipper ignored them, mostly. She had no idea what she was dealing with. Bill had played him once before, had played them all, in a long, long game where no one but Bill had even been able to see the whole board, and Dipper and everyone he cared about had been nothing but pawns. Dipper couldn’t shake the crawling feeling that it was happening all over again. Even if Ian was really who he said he was, there was still a manipulative, deceitful, demonic spirit lurking at the very core of him, and how could any of them know that it wasn’t just waiting for the right circumstances to be drawn back out?

But…he did crossword or number puzzles with his coffee every morning. He uncomplainingly braided Mira’s hair whenever she plopped down in his lap and gave him a pointed grin. He tried (and usually failed) to cook. He fell asleep on the couch in the middle of movies, and drooled all over the back cushions. He got lost in the grocery store looking for amchur and coriander. Ian acted like…well, like nothing more than an average, ordinary, non-supervillainous guy.

And, despite himself, Dipper found his guard starting to slip.

...

When Dipper tessered into the studio, Ian was staring at a page of rough panels, looking like he hadn't moved from his seat in hours. He had the end of a pencil stuck in his mouth and was chewing on it distractedly, seemingly unaware of the graphite marks on his lower lip and chin, eyes fixed in a vacant stare on the empty row of panels along the bottom. Dipper had to repeat his name three times before Ian slowly looked up, giving him a bleary look before turning back to the drawing table. He pulled the pencil from his mouth and scribbled something in the bottom left panel, before sticking the pencil back into his mouth and crossing his arms, leaning back in his chair to squint at the page.

Dipper popped from his position in front of the table to hover just behind Ian, looking down at the page. "That's...nice?" He looked over the arrows and short descriptions, and asked, "Am I supposed to be laughing?"

Ian shrugged, tilting his head to the right. "I've been awake for the past forty-eight hours and kinda lost track of whether any of this was funny-horrifying or just horrifying at about the thirty-six hour mark." He shook his head, the movement sluggish. "Sometimes I wonder who let me write for children's programming."

"You should get some sleep," Dipper said, automatically. How long did it take humans to die from sleep deprivation, again?

Ian shrugged again. "Don't need it. Yet. Got at least another twelve hours before I start hallucinating and there's a shitload of work to do." He half-turned, grinning up at Dipper, a faint glint of mania in his heavily-shadowed eyes, and a pang of terrible familiarity lanced through Dipper, freezing him in place. "Man, the human body is amazingly durable. I'm always surprised by how much you can put one of these babies through before it gives out. So - noose joke. Think that can ride, or are the censors gonna flip?"

Dipper only barely resisted the urge to scream, 'Are you doing this on  _PURPOSE!?!?_ ' in Ian's face. "Seriously?" he groaned to no one in particular instead, adding as an afterthought, “I...think you should really get some sleep.”

Ian made a dismissive noise.

“Twelve hours, I told you! I've got lots to do and the clock's ticking!" He turned back to his boards, giving a thoughtful hum. "And besides, I'd be too busy pissing myself to have a conversation like this with you if I weren't sleep deprived and hopped up on caffeine and - this weird kind of health-food-shake-thing that Mira makes, they're her own recipe, I'm positive she puts some kind of illegal stimulant in them but that's probably where she gets all her energy from, man she sure seems shy and quiet but only until you've known her for more than five seconds - you know what, I'm leaving the noose joke and if they don't like it then they can cut it." He leaned back over the drawing table and furiously sketched, in a few jagged, deeply-scored lines, the frightened face of a small child, before turning back to Dipper, who was hanging speechless at his shoulder. "Would you pass me my red pencil?"

"You're scared of talking to me?"

Ian blinked, slowly, disbelievingly, his right eye taking a little longer to open than the left. He didn’t say anything, only fixed Dipper with a mild, unblinking stare for just long enough that Dipper started to get uncomfortable.

Then he burst out laughing.

“Are you kidding? You tried to  _kill_  me the first time you ever saw me! Am I scared of talking to you!” 

Dipper opened his mouth, then shut it again. No. There was no way, he was  _not_  going to let himself be guilt-tripped by  _Bill freaking Cipher_  - “I - I apologised for that!”

Ian was still smiling, but there was no humour in it, the laughter in his voice turning terrible as he pushed himself up from his seat. “Really? You really think saying ‘oh sorry here have an inside-out hamster’ makes up for attempted murder? All your  _apology_  did was confirm what I already thought.” He stopped, taking a deep breath. “You still hate me. You still want me dead. And I say and do stuff that sets you off but I have  _no clue_  what! Do you have any idea what that’s like?” He stopped, giving a bitter laugh and glaring at the studio wall. “Of course you don’t, you know everything. No uncertainty for the almighty Alcor, am I right?"

“I wouldn’t actually say  _no_  uncertainty,” Dipper started, and Ian cut him off with another laugh.

“Oh, that’s right. It’s not enough to just have all the knowledge in the universe at your fingertips. You have to see it for yourself. That’s why you’ve been hanging around watching me ever since we met, right? Don’t even try to deny it, I know when I’m being watched. I’m a nervous wreck thanks to you! I can’t do  _anything_  knowing you’re always there just waiting for me to slip up, to do – I don’t even know what! It’s like living with my neck on the chopping block! And I won’t even know I’ve done something wrong until it’s too late!”

Dipper felt his heart drop into the gold-tipped toes of his shiny leather shoes. Deep down, a silent part of him was gloating, triumphant in the knowledge that the tables had well and truly turned. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to be completely happy about it. For an instant, he was twelve years old and painfully human again, still battered from Bill’s possession, lying awake watching the slow inch of the moonlight across the attic wall and trying desperately not to let his eyes slip shut for fear of seeing the world go grey around him, hearing that awful laughter echoing in his ears…

_I’ll be watching…_

“Do you know why I’m still awake?” Ian’s voice was already growing hoarse as he stepped forward, forcing Dipper to stumble over his own wings as he tried to pull himself backwards. “I! Can’t! Sleep! The minute I try, the nightmares come back and I wake up screaming! I’ve been through three dreamcatchers and nearly a whole bottle of sleeping pills and nothing helps! This has been the worst month of my  _entire life_  except for the one that got me an all-expense-paid mandatory two-week vacation to Metropolitan and it is  _all. Your. Fault!_ ”

He stopped, breathing hard, while Dipper stared, speechless.

“Shit,” Ian mumbled, before Dipper could find his voice again. “Shit, shit, I –  _fuck_. Good job, Ian, now you’ve done it. You went and pissed off the Dreambender again.” He pressed both hands over his eyes for a moment, curling inward on himself as he collapsed back into his chair. 

Dipper could barely make out his next words, mumbled from behind his hands. “If you’re gonna kill me, just do it and get it over with.”

For a moment, Dipper couldn’t quite catch a breath, and this was  _stupid_ , this artificial, temporary body didn’t  _need_  to breathe, he shouldn’t feel like he was dying. But he couldn’t shake off the tightness in his chest any more than he could shake the memory, crystal clear and razor-edged, of those final moments, the murderous rage in Bill Cipher’s single eye as he bore down on Dipper, the feeling of absolute helplessness and insignificance that had overtaken Dipper as Bill burned his way into Dipper’s mind...

And Dipper couldn’t stop picturing -  _remembering_  - himself, wings flared, little more than a humanoid shape cut through the fabric of reality into the pure void beyond, staring into the cerulean-burning soul of the helpless, insignificant creature who was now rocking slightly back and forth on the chair in front of him, and wondering how best to snuff it out.

When he finally managed to string words together, what came out wasn’t an apology, or a question, even though there were a thousand things he wanted to ask and he knew, with a sick certainty, that Ian deserved the apology. Instead, what came out of his mouth was, “I haven’t been giving you nightmares.”

Ian gave a hollow laugh. “Sure. And you haven’t been making the recurring ones worse, either.”

“I haven’t,” Dipper repeated, dully. “I didn’t - I don’t want to hurt you.” It was only a half-truth, but...he was a demon. Demons lied. “I just wanted to keep Mizar safe.”

Ian shifted, drawing his hands away from his face as he straightened up in his seat, blue eyes piercing Dipper where he hovered like a butterfly pinned to cork. “Safe from  _what_?”

Dipper hesitated. “You’re better off not knowing.”

Ian raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“I’m serious. The price for that kind of knowledge is way higher than you’d want to pay, and what you’d get in exchange isn’t something you’d want anyway.”

“Oh well that just makes me feel  _worlds_  better,” Ian said sarcastically, flopping facedown on the drawing table. “So, what, now you care about me?”

Dipper reached up, fidgeting with his bow tie. “Let’s just say you’ve proven inexplicably hard to hate. And...” He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders in preparation. And he’d thought reassuring his mortal enemy was bad enough already. “Miz- Mira would be devastated if she lost you.”

He hadn’t been sure what reaction to expect from Ian, but he definitely hadn’t expected a derisive snort. “Seriously? What’s so funny?” Dipper snapped, and Ian raised his head up just enough to look him in the eye.

“You really think so?” Ian laughed, again, his sharp cackle cut off abruptly as he buried his face in his arms again. Dipper had to listen hard to make out his next words.

“If Mira has to choose, she'll choose you."

"What?"

"You heard me." Ian didn’t raise his head, forcing Dipper to try to translate his mumbled words through the sleeve of his flannel shirt. "She’s - she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and here I am fucking it up just like every other good thing I’ve ever had in my life.”

Dipper couldn’t move for a long moment. 

Finally, with a wave of his hand, he conjured a chair for himself, sinking into it and looking all around the studio. “You really think  _you’re_  fucking things up with Mira?” he asked quietly, remembering the look on her face when he’d told her she couldn’t afford the knowledge she’d wanted, the bitter frown she’d worn for the few seconds before he’d apologized. “I’m the one that ruined her life. I’m the reason she’s Mizar. I’m the reason she isn’t free. And I’m the only reason there’s any tension between you two, you’re...almost sickeningly cute together,” he admitted, grudgingly, the words dragging out of him like lead weights. “If it comes down to a choice…she’ll choose you.”

Ian snickered, and Dipper bristled. “What’s so funny?”

“Just thinking. After all this, she might just decide to leave us both in the dust.”

Dipper couldn’t help a snort of laughter at that, even though it wasn’t funny. Mira was the Mizar he’d been closest to in – in – he wasn’t even sure how long, and the thought of losing her now, for nothing – 

“I guess we’d better figure out a way to tolerate each other, then,” he said, to the studio wall opposite him. 

“Like a Cold War pact?”

Dipper forced himself not to react. “It’s a start.”

He couldn’t see Ian grin, but he could feel the slight shift in his aura. “Works for me.”


	5. Chapter 5

“You’re honestly still seeing that creep?”

Mira looked up from the debit machine. “He’s not a creep. What do you have against Ian, anyway?”

Sun-mi shrugged, the gesture nearly hidden by the oversized scarf wrapped around her shoulders. “I can’t really explain it, there’s just something _not right_ about that guy. And you can’t trust anybody who thinks total nuclear annihilation makes a good punchline.”

“Okay, it’s called black humour, and you’ve definitely heard me make weirder jokes.”

“What’ll you have, miss?”

Sun-mi turned to face the man behind the counter with a brief flicker of a smile. “Small maple latte, please. I told you, Mira. He’s probably a serial killer. Watch out for him.”

Mira rolled her eyes, taking her jasmine tea from a smiling barista. “Whatever. New topic time. What’re you working on now?”

Sun-mi handed a fistful of coins over to the cashier, stuffing her wallet back into her battered leather messenger bag as she walked over to join Mira at the other end of the counter. “I can’t tell you much, because if I’m right and anyone knows I’m digging, I could be in serious trouble.”

“That’s what you always say.”

Sun-mi laughed. “That’s because it’s always true! But keep watching the school paper. If everything goes according to plan, I should be breaking a _huge_ story sometime next month.” She pushed her oversized horn-rimmed glasses up her nose, tucking a few locks of thick black hair behind her ear and into her beanie.

“If it’s so dangerous, why do you keep doing it?”

“Are you kidding me? This is only what I’ve wanted to do since way back when we all thought I was a boy. I’m not just gonna give it up because of a little risk.” Sun-mi shot Mira a crooked grin, a hint of apology visible in her eyes before she turned to examine the tea blends displayed in the rack on the counter in front of her. “What about you? What’re you working on?”

Mira shrugged, blowing carefully on her tea before capping the cardboard cup with a plastic lid. “Not much,” she said, over the hiss of steam from behind the counter. “I’m writing a short story for this anthology of women writers. I’ve got lots of ideas but I haven’t chosen anything yet.”

Sun-mi quirked an eyebrow. “Bounce them off of me. What’s the theme?”

“Feminism and Martian post-colonialism.” Mira paused as the barista handed Sun-mi’s latte across the counter, taking a sip of her tea. “Ow! Shit, I always forget how hot that is after I put the lid on.”

“You forget how hot your cup of boiling leaf water is?” Sun-mi teased gently, as she took a lid and slipped it onto her latte. “Come on, there’s a free table by the window there with two seats.”

They’d barely sat down when a familiar voice said, “Why, Mira Ramachandran, imagine running into you here!”

Mira looked up with a smile as Sun-mi’s jaw dropped. “Rosa! Wow, this is such a weird coincidence! Pull up a chair, sit down, hang out with us for a while.” She glanced over at Sun-mi, who was still looking up at Rosa with a look of frozen surprise on her face. “Oh! This is my friend Sun-mi, she’s a journalism major at the university and the top reporter for the school paper. Sun-mi, this is Rosa -”

“I’m familiar with her work,” Sun-mi said, dazedly, giving herself a little shake.

“She’s Ian’s best friend.”

Sun-mi opened and shut her mouth a few times, before she seemed to find her words. “Sun-mi Lee. It’s...an enormous surprise, and an even greater pleasure, to meet you,” she said, inclining her head.

“Rosa Darling, but you knew that,” Rosa said, cheeks dimpling as she smiled at Sun-mi. She held out her right hand to shake, and Sun-mi eyed it distrustfully, before warily reaching out to take it. “Oh my. Well, isn’t that just -”

“Far more common than you or anyone else ever thinks,” Sun-mi said matter-of-factly, pulling her hand back before Rosa had a chance to stare. “One in about every five hundred babies in the States are born with some form of polydactyly, it’s not unusual.”

“I do beg your pardon,” Rosa said quickly, drawing her own hand back. “Meant no offense.”

“None taken,” Sun-mi replied, but a faint shadow settled over her face, and she crossed her arms as Rosa turned to steal a chair from a neighbouring table.

"Ah hah. Okay, this isn’t awkward at all,” Mira muttered into the plastic lid of her mug, taking a sip of tea and making a face when it scorched her tongue. She thumped the mug down on the table, catching the attention of both the other women at the table. “So! Rosa, what brings you here? Ian mentioned you were working on a new album, I thought you’d be stuck in a studio or something...”

“Shh, not so loud!” Rosa said, with a wink. “And I’ve always supported local businesses, I’m just a small-town girl at heart.” She leaned back in her seat, flashing a charming smile and a wave through the window at a man who’d stopped to stare.

“You have a new album coming out?” Sun-mi asked, raising an eyebrow.

Rosa didn’t say anything, just smiled and held her index finger up to her lips. “Either of y’all want cake? They had red velvet behind the counter, and it looks delicious.”

Mira glanced over at Sun-mi, who shrugged and held up her coffee. “This is enough sugar for me.”

“I’d have cake,” Mira said, and Rosa broke into a broad grin.

“Now that’s the spirit. Sweets for the sweet!” She glanced over her shoulder and snapped her fingers, and a woman in a crisp black suit and sunglasses materialized at her elbow, staring straight ahead. The man watching them through the window turned pink and hurried away down the street as Rosa said to the woman, “Be a doll and pick us up two slices of red velvet cake, will ya?”

The woman in the black suit gave a stiff nod and turned on her heel, starting over to the counter. Rosa turned back to the two women at the table. “So - Sunny, is it?”

“Sun-mi.”

Rosa nodded. “Sun-mi. Sorry, sugar. Just let me know if I’m mispronouncing it, will you?” 

Sun-mi gave Rosa a long, assessing look. “That was fine,” she said, at last, and Mira breathed out.

“So.” Rosa leaned forward, resting both elbows on the table and her chin in one hand. “You’re a reporter?”

“Investigative journalist and independent researcher, yes.” Sun-mi pushed her glasses up her nose, and folded both hands around her paper mug. “And you’re a busker?”

Mira managed to stifle a groan by taking another long, scalding sip of her tea as Rosa burst into peals of laughter.

The red velvet cake, when it arrived, was as delicious as promised. Mira managed to convince Sun-mi to try a mouthful, and she was forced to admit that yes, it was pretty good. Rosa, thankfully, had figured out how to wrap her mouth around Sun-mi’s name, and Sun-mi had at least stopped giving Rosa a wary look every time Rosa opened her mouth, though she still only managed a grudging smile at Rosa’s jokes. She seemed to be in a little better humour after Rosa asked her what ‘independent researcher’ entailed, though, and listened to Sun-mi’s entire enthusiastic, if somewhat overlong, explanation with an expression like she was hanging on every word.

Mira took one last bite of cake, scraping her fork across her plate to get the last bits of frosting, and pushed her chair away from the table. Sun-mi almost immediately followed suit.

“Welp, I should really get going, I have to get dinner started and I’ve still got a chapter that needs to be edited tonight,” Mira said brightly, grabbing her empty plate and her tea. “This has been nice, but I’ll see you both later?”

Sun-mi grabbed her messenger bag from the back of her chair and slung it over her shoulder. “I’ve got to get out of here as well, I’ve got a meeting with the editor about next month’s front page.”

“Hey now, don’t y’all go runnin’ off just yet,” Rosa said, rising from her own seat. “This may sound strange, since we hardly know each other and all, but I have a proposition for ya. A _business_ proposition,” she added hurriedly, when Sun-mi’s expression froze. “There’s some research I need done, some...investigation on behalf of a friend.”

“There are plenty of private detectives working in town,” Sun-mi said, cautiously, but she didn’t make any move to leave.

“Nothin’ like that!” Rosa glanced over at Mira, who felt the pit of her stomach hollow out with realisation.

“I don’t think -” she started, at the same time as Rosa launched into an explanation.

“Ian’s been drivin’ himself crazy worryin’ over who his past lives might’ve been. Figured it might do him some good to know for sure, give him some peace of mind.”

“You want _me_ to investigate _Ian Beale’s_ past lives?”

“Guys, this really isn’t -” Mira started, only to be cut off again when Rosa turned wide eyes in her direction.

“You’ve been worried about him, haven’t you? Just last week, when we had that spa date, you said -”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to go poking around in stuff that -” Mira actually bit down on her tongue, swallowing everything she’d been about to say about Alcor and _you’re better off not knowing_. “- isn’t any of my business,” she finished, lamely, instead.

“But you have been worried,” Rosa said, finally, turning back to face Sun-mi. “And so have I. It’d do everyone good to get some answers, and Mira thinks pretty highly of you. Tell the truth, so do I, now I’ve heard ya explain what it is ya do. You’ve got passion, and method, and that’s a powerful combination. Now, all I’d be asking you is to do a bit of diggin’, find out if and when a few things happened, just enough to know if they were real and get a general sense -”

“ _If_ they were real?” Sun-mi shook her head, reaching down to pick up the remnants of her latte. “I’m in the middle of working on an expose. I’m sorry, I don’t have time for chasing ghosts.”

Rosa nodded once, and sighed. And then, just when Mira was starting to relax: “Name your price.”

Sun-mi’s gaze flicked up to meet Mira’s eyes, and Mira winced.

“I’m serious. What would it take to convince ya to give this a shot?” 

Sun-mi shook her head, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “An exclusive interview.”

Rosa’s expression didn’t so much as shift. “Done.” 

Sun-mi’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and she pulled off her glasses before putting them back on, settling them comfortably against the shallow bridge of her nose. “And I want exclusive rights to break the news about your upcoming album.”

A faint frown crossed Rosa’s face before she erased it with a practiced smile. “That might be a bit trickier, hon. We’ve already got a press junket prepared and ready to go -”

“That’s what it would take to convince me to, ah, ‘give this a shot’.” There was a quiet note of triumph in Sun-mi’s voice. Mira, looking between them, noticed that for the first time, Rosa was frowning while Sun-mi wore a small smile.

“Ya got guts, girl,” Rosa said, at last, and her tone was one of grudging respect. “I’ll see what I can do.”

...

On her way out of the coffee shop, Mira slam-dunked her empty paper cup into the recycling chute with more force than necessary.

...

“Whoa, is that a violin?”

Ian nearly jumped out of his skin at the unexpected voice from behind him. “I thought you weren’t going to spy on me anymore!” he said, spinning to face Alcor, who was hovering at his shoulder wearing a grin that was slightly too wide for his face.

“I’m not. Mira’s hanging out with her friends and last time I tagged along she asked me not to. Well, okay, her exact words were ‘you’re freaking out my friends and you’re a worse worrywart than my dad, would you _please_ find somewhere else to be’.” The smile dropped into a pout for a moment, before curving back upwards in an unsettling twist. “So I came to see what you were up to!”

Ian held up his fiddle and bow for inspection. “Okay, now you’ve seen. Don’t you have some kind of important Dreambender business to attend to?”

Alcor’s grin, if it were possible, grew even wider. “Nah.” He kicked backwards in the air, into a reclining position, feet up and hands behind his head, and then pulled a glossy black violin and matching bow from, seemingly, the thin air behind his back. “Hey, do you know this one?”

Ian watched in disbelief as Alcor tucked the violin under his chin, raised the bow, hesitated for a moment, and then brought the bow down on the strings. The sound that emanated from the violin was unearthly, a wail that seemed to rise and rise without ever leaving its original octave, a sound that seemed like it couldn’t possibly be made by any one violin. “Augh! What _is_ that?”

“What, you don’t like it?” Alcor asked, sounding a little too smug over the unceasing sound of the rising tone.

“What? No! Is that - that’s not even _music_ , that’s just - is that what passes for music for demons?” Ian pressed a hand to his forehead, considering putting down his fiddle so he could stick his fingers in his ears. There was something unsettling about the constant tone, something that set his teeth buzzing and his head swimming and made him feel like he was about to vibrate right out of his skin. He was surprised by the snarl in his own voice when he snapped, “Would you _cut it out_?!”

Alcor raised his bow, and the tone snapped off abruptly. “You could’ve just asked,” he said, that unnerving grin still plastered over his face. “So, not that one. How about Tam Lin?”

It took Ian a moment to process the change in subject. The lightheadedness was thankfully starting to fade in the blissful silence, but it was still making it hard to think straight. “Wait. Are you saying that all this is because you just wanted to jam with somebody?”

Alcor shrugged.

“...you are really, really weird,” Ian concluded, after what felt like far too long. He took a deep, steadying breath in, and sighed, “Tam Lin into St. Anne’s Reel? And if you try to bet me a fiddle of gold against my soul that you can play it better, I’m kicking you out.”

“Hmm. Not a bad idea,” Alcor said, flashing his second row of sharp teeth in Ian’s direction as he raised his bow again.

Before either of them could start playing, though, the apartment door flew open with a bang. There was a jangle that sounded like keys hitting the wall, and then Mira shuffled out of the entryway into the living room.

She paused for a moment, taking in the scene, before saying, “I’m going to choose to believe you were about to have a friendly jam session, and neither of you better disillusion me.”

“That’s...definitely one possible valid interpretation of what’s happening here,” Ian said, with a quick glance over at Alcor. “What’s the matter? You look like you just found out that bunnies aren’t real.”

Mira opened her mouth, then stopped and gave him a look. “Bunnies _are_ real.”

“Oh, are they?”

“Okay, cut it out, now is not the time,” Mira sighed, as she slouched across the room, flopped into the armchair, and lay there, spreadeagled like a starfish. 

“Starshine, what’s going on?”

“Your best friend just _hired_ my friend over coffee.”

Ian blinked. “Is...that...a bad thing?”

“Nobody asked her to!” Mira kicked both feet against the floor and let out a frustrated noise. “We were just having coffee together and then out of _nowhere_ she’s all ‘oh would you just do this entire job for me?’ and we’re both like ‘what is even happening here’ and now I guess Sun-mi’s researching your past lives. Surprise!” she said weakly, waving one arm half-heartedly.

"I - what?” Ian edged away from Alcor almost unconsciously, before forcing himself to stop. “Believe me, I didn’t ask her to do that.”

“Yeah, well, neither did Sun-mi.” Mira waved one arm vaguely, before letting it flop back over the armrest. “It was just really weird and uncomfortable and I don’t know what she was even doing there in the first place. Does she usually just go to random coffeeshops with, like, a bodyguard entourage?”

“Sometimes,” Ian admitted. “Hey, I’m sorry. I’ll talk to her. She means well, she’s just...used to getting her own way. I think sometimes she forgets - and I know sometimes she chooses to forget - that not everybody is falling all over themselves to give it to her.“

“Would you?” Mira shuffled upwards slightly out of the depths of the chair. “Thanks, babe. I’m sorry, Rosa’s really great and I know she’s your best friend since forever and she saved your life and everything and I _want_ to get along with her, but this whole thing is just -”

“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to apologise.” Ian walked over and sat down on the couch beside the armchair, reaching over to take Mira’s hand. “I’ll talk to her about treating your friends like her staff. Now will you come out of the chair?”

Mira hummed thoughtfully to herself, before wriggling upright in the chair so it no longer appeared to be halfway to swallowing her. “Thanks."

There was a moment of quiet, the world seeming to narrow down to just the two of them, before she asked, “So what _were_ you and Alcor about to do with the violins?”

“Jam,” Ian answered honestly, and Mira snorted.

“Yeah, right. Come on, what was really going on?”

“I’m serious! We were just about to play Tam Lin before you walked in.”

Mira tilted her head slightly, giving Ian a disbelieving look. “Seriously?”

“Cross my heart!”

Ian was absolutely certain that the lazy grin that crossed his girlfriend’s face did not bode well. “Sooooo…you two were having manly bonding time?”

“That is not even slightly -”

“Was it a _bro-date?_ ”

“Okay, new rule,” Ian said, glancing over his shoulder for support from Alcor. He was somehow completely unsurprised to find that the demon had vanished. “You never say that again, and I won’t try to convince you that rabbits don’t exist.”

“It was totally a bro-date,” Mira said, a smile of smug self-satisfaction crossing her face.

Ian sighed as he pushed himself up off the couch. “I really don’t know what I expected.”

...

Mira was asleep when Dipper popped into the apartment, deep in a REM cycle, wielding a giant pen that made everything she wrote with it come to life in a battle for the gumdrop kingdom against the Trash Queen. It was probably too late to come check up on her, he realized, looking around the darkened bedroom and watching her chest rise and fall gently with her steady, even breathing. Just seeing her safe in her own bed was calming the flood of burning ice that had been churning in his stomach since the last summons, though, and he hovered a moment longer at the end of the bed, watching her sleep.

_\- it had been a girl, not very old, not much older than the Mabel in his memory often was, and a handful of her friends, just two or three, all blue-white with terror, all shaking slightly as they held hands around the circle –_

Dipper gave himself a little shake, trying to force the memory away. Even after everything he’d seen ( _and done_ , a nasty little voice whispered in the back of his mind), there were still some things that could leave an impression on even his demonic memory.

\- _they’d been so scared, so terrified, and he’d known why when the door had flown open and blown out half the candles and the factory overseer had stormed in -  
_

Blue-gold sparks crackled through his hair and one leapt between his fingers as he reached over to brush a lock of thick, dark hair from Mira’s face. She smiled in her sleep, and Dipper watched as a shadowy figure spilled from her dream-self’s pen, a shadowy figure who flared broad wings and shot a beam of brilliant light into the heart of the Trash Queen’s landfill monster, causing it to crumble into thousands of tiny gremlins.

\- _the man’s blood had boiled under his skin, the fat bubbling and the skin peeling as he cooked from within, and it wasn’t until he was nothing but a charred lump on the floor that Dipper looked back at the frightened girls and realised he’d done nothing to help them, had only made their trouble worse -  
_

Mira rolled over in her sleep, throwing out both arms across the entire queen-sized bed, and Dipper frowned. Her boyfriend, the isosceles monster in human shape, was absent from his side of the bed.

A nasty little part of Dipper wondered - even hoped - that this would be the night that he’d finally catch Bi- _Ian_ at whatever tricks he was up to. After this last summoning, he really wanted to do something that would make a difference, something that would _matter_ , something that would change things for the better for at least one person, permanently. If he could save the world again, so much the better. ( _And if he could hurt Bill while he was doing it, hurt him like he’d hurt the overseer, destroy him utterly from the inside out -_ )

But when Dipper found him, Ian wasn’t doing anything more sinister than sitting on the couch in the living room with all the lights off, his hands clasped loosely in front of him and his elbows resting on his knees, slouched forward and staring at the fake-hardwood floor.

Dipper had to sift through time zones in his head to make sure he had the right one before saying, quietly, “It is way too early in the morning for you to be awake.”

Ian just shrugged, a short, tight movement, not looking up from his clasped hands. 

“You should probably be asleep,” Dipper tried, and got only a snort in response.

“Yeah, I probably should,” Ian mumbled, after a moment of silence, and said nothing more.

Dipper looked around the living room. He could see everything in clear detail, but he knew from long experience that human sight was a lot worse in the dark than his was. “Do you want a light on or something?”

Ian shrugged only one shoulder this time.

Dipper glanced back over his shoulder, towards the bedroom and Mira’s candy-coloured dreams. But then again, he never had been able to leave a mystery alone. “Okay, what are you doing sitting out here alone in the dark at three in the morning?”

Ian looked up, and even though Dipper knew human eyes were kind of useless in darkness, met Dipper’s eyes. It took Dipper a moment to remember that they were probably glowing. Ian stared for a moment, his expression blank, before turning his gaze back towards the floor. “Can’t sleep,” he said, shortly.

Too late, a memory floated up to the forefront of Dipper’s mind, and he felt himself drop nearly a foot in the air. “Nightmares?” he asked, feeling the pit of his stomach drop out when Ian’s head snapped up almost instantly. “I told you I haven’t been sending them, and that’s true,” Dipper protested, into the face of the sudden flickers of fear in Ian’s aura. “But I might be able to make them stop.”

The fear subsided slowly, but Ian kept his gaze fixed on Dipper’s face. The silence dragged on, until Dipper caught himself rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck and had to forcibly put his hand down. He was a very terrifying, all-powerful demon. Terrifying, all-powerful demons didn’t get unnerved by silence. “What?”

“Isn’t this the part where you tell me what it’s going to cost me?”

“What?” Dipper repeated, stupidly, even as part of him sat up straight and started to vibrate with glee at the possibilities. This was his chance! He could ask for _anything_ \- well, almost anything - he could think of, he could force Bi- _Ian_ to leave Mira alone, could make him reveal his plans, could maybe, if he played his cards right, even get him to sign over his soul - “No, no, I’m not going to - look, I’ve been kind of an ass to you, and I still owe you an apology. Just let me help you out.”

Ian still didn’t look convinced, and the part of himself that Dipper unceremoniously dubbed ‘Dipper’s demon conscience’ was screaming in cheated rage, so Dipper quickly added, “And I want to see what these nightmares are all about. I mean, if they’re keeping you awake even after you’ve kept _yourself_ awake for something like forty-two hours straight, they’ve got to be pretty potent.”

He didn’t mention the fact that recurring dreams often had something to do with past lives. He had a sinking feeling that he didn’t need to.

And sure enough, Ian’s suspicious look slowly melted into one of resigned acceptance. He nodded, turning his face away as he asked, “So what do I have to do?”

“Not much. Just lie back, close your eyes, try to take deep breaths.”

Dipper waited until Ian had gotten settled on the couch, flat on his back with his hands still clasped over his chest, before putting a clawed hand over Ian’s forehead. Ian looked like he was about to ask a question, but Dipper gave a slight push on a few neurons and Ian fell asleep before so much as a word could pass his lips.

It didn’t take long for him to drop into REM sleep, and despite himself, Dipper couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy. Ian must have been really sleep-deprived. Dipper managed to push aside the feeling, though, slipping off the physical plane and into Ian’s dreamscape. Excuse or not, he really _was_ curious to see what the inside of Ian’s head looked like.

Dipper was expecting weird. He was expecting a two-dimensional existence, or reality with the curtains drawn back, or just some kind of strange jumble of California and old horror movie monsters and things that should not be.

Dipper wasn’t expecting the inside of Ian’s dreams to be... _familiar_.

But there he was, in a grayscale world that seemed to otherwise be operating along the normal laws of physics, staring down from a spot in midair at...was that...was that the Mystery Shack? It seemed distorted, somehow, all its lines and angles a little exaggerated, and it looked as old and run-down as Dipper remembered it, but at the same time new and in good repair. A tower of metal antennas stood in the same place as the totem pole that Dipper remembered, the ‘S’ from the sign was both affixed to the roof and lying on the ground slowly being overgrown by weeds, the attic window was broken and whole at the same time. Everything flickered slightly as he looked at it, different times trying to occupy the same space.

“Okay, this is enough to give _me_ a headache,” Dipper muttered to himself, swooping down towards the Shack and the patch of trees surrounding it. The closer he got, the more the place seemed to flicker back and forth, growing less stable. He swept through the door without bothering to open it, expecting to find a maze of impossible corridors, gravity-defying staircases, and locked doors, like he had when they’d all followed Bill into Stan’s mind. He wasn’t expecting to find more of the same, just the familiar layout of the Shack, the decor shifting and changing as he went. He stopped to watch the gift shop empty, then fill with boxes and strange metallic parts and a gaping hole in the wall, the vending machine taking its place as soon as Dipper blinked, though he could still see the hole, just like he could still see the strange machinery through the merchandise.

Ian was in the attic room, the twin beds and the clutter around the walls changing as the times shifted around them, staring out through the triangle-shaped window. Dipper noticed, as he drifted in, that Ian’s feet weren’t touching the floor.

“This is your nightmare?” Dipper asked, realising with a silent exhale of relief that other than the fact that he was hovering in place, Ian seemed otherwise exactly the same as he was in waking life, down to the dark circles under his eyes. If his mental representation of himself was human, then maybe he really _didn’t_ remember anything. Then again, if he was still Bill, he could shapeshift into anything in the dreamscape... “It doesn’t seem all that scary.”

“This is how it starts.” Ian turned, looking away from the window, and Dipper stole a glance through it to see a view of the town that definitely shouldn’t have been visible through it. He blinked, and the view was replaced by another, staring out across the street at the laser tag arena. It took a few more blinks and a few more impossible shifts of scene for him to realise what was happening - the window was looking out through any image of a triangle or an eye in Gravity Falls. He’d done the same thing himself with stars for - centuries, now. 

“And it gets scarier now?”

Ian’s face was hard to see and even harder to read in the gloom that suddenly started to settle over the attic. “It does when _they_ show up.”

Dipper didn’t get a chance to ask who ‘ _they’_ were or what was so frightening about them. The door swung open, and two small, dark figures, barely up to Dipper’s waist, barged in, screaming and laughing as they ran around the room. Their voices were strangely muted, as though he was hearing them from a long distance, or over an old radio on a signal bounced out of its receiving area by a storm.

Dipper opened his mouth to ask what was going on, and one of the figures ran right through him.

He stopped, shutting his mouth, as the other figure followed. Ian gave him a knowing look, walking towards the door. Even though his feet never touched the floor, he walked like usual instead of floating, and Dipper let out another relieved breath that he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

“Do you get it?” Ian asked, as he started down the stairs. “My therapist didn’t. It’s not this place that’s scary, it’s not - it’s just - it’s like I don’t exist,” he said, as another, taller figure walked up the stairs and straight through him. “No one can see me, no one can hear me, no one can touch me - this place is always full of people, but I’m always alone. Completely, and totally, alone.” He put a hand on the banister, and the banister swirled apart into smoke around his hand, only reforming when he pulled it away. “And I can’t interact with any of it. Like none of it’s real. Or all of it’s real, and I’m not.”

Dipper swallowed hard, feeling his own chest going tight and his breath growing shallow, which was silly, because here in the dreamscape there was absolutely no point to him breathing and he wasn’t sure why he was even bothering. But he _knew_ that feeling, could remember it in razor-edged detail, the freefalling terror when he’d first woken up on another plane of existence, not knowing what was happening or why, and no one had heard him, no one had _noticed_ him, even when he was screaming at the top of his lungs...

“It’s not as scary this time around,” Ian observed, calmly. “Maybe it’s because you’re here? Maybe it’s just because I know I’m dreaming, and this will all be gone when I wake up.”

“Yeah,” Dipper said distantly. His head was whirling. On the one hand, Ian was clearly having recurring dreams based on memories of being Bill, which...well, it couldn’t bode well. But on the other hand...

 _\- “MABEL! Mabel, please, you of all people have got to hear me,_ somebody’s _got to hear me...” -_

...well, a demon wouldn’t be scared of being alone, stranded on another plane of existence, would they?

It took him a moment to realise that Ian was watching him expectantly. “So, can you get rid of them?”

Dipper shook his head, trying to clear it. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll just - just give me a minute.”

He took a second to collect himself, to push the memories aside. It had been - it felt like forever since he’d been confined to the mindscape, since he’d been so weak that he couldn’t hold a physical form when he wanted for as long as he wanted, and he’d forgotten how awful, how terrifying, how _lonely_ it had been. No wonder Ian didn’t want to sleep.

Dipper focused, and the Shack started to collapse around them, walls folding outwards on themselves to reveal a shimmering night sky beyond. The staircase rolled itself up under Ian’s feet and the floors fell away board by board, leaving them both hovering in a starry void as the landscape unwound itself all around them. As he unraveled the dream, Dipper focused on unknotting it from the depths of Ian’s subconscious, gathering it up in shimmering strands like any other memory. Ian didn’t need to know that all of this was true. He really shouldn’t have had these memories in the first place, and taking them to munch on would both get rid of the source of his nightmares and keep Dipper’s demon conscience quiet about helping Ian for nothing. 

The closer he came to the root of the recurring dreams, though, the more snarled the memories became, knotted into the depths of Ian’s mind like one of Mabel’s knitting projects gone horribly wrong. Dipper followed a few shining strands into the knot before realising that, if he didn’t want to do unknown harm to everything that made Ian _Ian_ , he was going to have to stop here, pull the dreams free, and cut his losses.

He almost didn’t notice Ian’s gasp, too focused on the tangle of deeply-buried memories, and it was only when all of those strands suddenly went taut that Dipper turned his attention back to what was happening on the surface of Ian’s dream.

He nearly dropped the bundle of memories he’d collected.

Stamped into the starry void around them like an artificial horizon was a massive ring, parallel lines glowing red like gashes cut into the dream to reveal an inferno on the other side. And between those lines, all around the horizon, burned familiar symbols.

Dipper only managed to pick out a shimmering shooting star before, almost without thinking, he reached out and yanked them both back into the waking world.

Ian sat bolt upright with a gasp, clutching his chest. He looked over at Dipper, eyes wide, and asked, “What the hell was _that_?”

Dipper bit down on the inside of his cheek, debating how much to tell him. “That was...unexpected. Did you recognise it?”

“What?” Ian looked blank for a second, before shaking his head. “I - actually, I can’t even remember any of the symbols now. Just that ring - it looked kind of like a summoning circle.” He looked up at Dipper, comprehension dawning. “Did you get summoned while you were _in my head_?”

Dipper glanced quickly to his left. “Yeah, we’ll go with that.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that in any of my dreams before,” Ian said, before an electric-blue jolt of fear ran through his aura and he demanded, “Did you - whatever you were doing to get rid of them. Did it work?”

In answer, Dipper held up the tangle of dreams and memories, their shimmer dulled somewhat by being pulled from the mindscape. Ian’s eyes widened farther as Dipper opened his mouth and popped the whole handful in and swallowed. Lonely wasn’t his favourite flavour of nightmares, he liked the spicier being-chased-by-something-impossible ones better, but the hint of panic did offset the loneliness nicely.

“You know, before this, I never would have thought that that would be how you’d get rid of nightmares, but it makes perfect sense,” Ian commented, as Dipper licked the last traces of stray dreamstuff from his fangs. 

“Why?”

Ian shrugged. “What else would a dream demon do with a nightmare?”

“What else indeed,” Dipper said, slowly, before snapping himself back into the moment. “That one should leave you alone now. So try and get some sleep, okay? Mira will kill me if she finds out I kept you up all night.”

Ian nodded, lying back down with his head on the armrest of the couch and shutting his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, quietly, as Dipper reached out, and an inexplicable wave of guilt washed over Dipper.

“Don’t mention it,” he said, just as quietly, and then, “Seriously, don’t mention it. I don’t want it getting out that I do freebies for friends, or everybody’s going to want one and the other demons will think I’ve gone soft.”

Ian laughed at that, one short bark quickly cut off. “Yeah,” he mumbled, as Dipper gently nudged his brain towards sleep. “Sure...they...would.”

When he was sure that Ian was asleep and dreaming peacefully, Dipper pulled away, still watching Ian warily as he floated over to the bedroom. He peered inside, checking to make sure that Mira was still sleeping, and noticed that her candy kingdom had dissolved in favour of a rabbit tea party. The Rabbit Prince himself was sitting at her right-hand side, complimenting her dress, which appeared to be a gigantic cupcake, and Dipper smiled as he pulled his head back through the bedroom door.

Faint worry still stirred in the back of his mind as he felt the familiar tug of a summons and let it drag him away, though. After everything he’d seen, all the time he’d spent watching as well as the visit to Ian’s dreamscape, Dipper had to admit that he’d been wrong. Ian wasn’t scheming. Ian wasn’t hiding anything. Ian was exactly what he seemed to be: just a slightly strange human who was completely in love with this incarnation of Mizar.

Dipper was pretty sure that Ian could be trusted.

But he still didn't trust Bill.


	6. Chapter 6

“Mira! Are you awake?”

Mira cracked one eye open, and only managed through long years of practice not to scream. “Alcor! I thought we established that hanging over people’s beds while they’re sleeping is bad-creepy?”

“I know, but...I need to talk to you.”

“Well, I’m awake _now_ ,” Mira sighed, as Alcor floated backwards, to hover nervously about a foot above the bed. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than having him right in her face. She’d take it. “What do you need to talk to me about that’s so urgent you have to ambush me the exact moment I wake up?”

“I’m worried about your boyfriend.”

“Oh for the love of -” Mira managed, with great effort, to bite off the oath. “This is what you woke me up to talk about? Again?”

“Well, technically I didn’t wake you up -”

“Alcor, nobody is going to be able to sleep with you hovering an inch from their nose.”

Instead of sputtering and trying with little success to deny it, the demon only shrugged, turning a pensive look towards the door. Mira frowned, shuffling up until she was sitting with her back against the headboard. If Alcor wasn’t getting flustered over accusations that he wasn’t acting totally normal and human, he must really be worried about something. “Okay, what’s the matter?”

A slight frown creased Alcor’s forehead. “I offered to help Ian with his nightmares, and while I was in his head, I saw something -”

Mira held up a hand to stop him mid-sentence, index finger raised. “You were _in his head_?”

“Yes!” Alcor crossed his arms defensively. “I had to get rid of his nightmares!”

Mira crossed her own arms, mirroring his pose. “I’ve seen you eat nightmares. You just wanted to poke around in his brain and see if you could find something to justify not liking him, didn’t you?”

“That wasn’t it at all,” Alcor protested. “They were recurring, it’s different -”

“Wait. Don’t you have to make a deal to get rid of recurring nightmares?” When Alcor didn’t answer, his eyes darting from left to right, Mira drew in a long breath, not quite a gasp, more a silent, wordless prayer for strength. “Alcor, _what_ did you _do_ to my boyfriend?”

“Nothing!” Alcor argued weakly. “And that’s actually what I’m worried about.”

“I don’t believe this.” Mira pushed past the demon, sliding out of bed. “I thought you two were finally starting to get along.”

“We -” Alcor froze, his ears flicking up and down as he stared into nothing, looking for all the world like something had just exploded in his face. “We…actually are?”

“Well, obviously not well, if you’re still suspicious! What did he even do to make you act so weird, anyway?”

“Nothing!” Alcor repeated. “Look, would you just let me explain?”

Mira paused in the middle of grabbing a t-shirt from the dresser. “Are you going to explain what made you freak out on him in the first place?”

“I told you, I _can’t_.” The pleading in Alcor’s voice sounded sincere, and for a moment Mira hesitated, torn between hearing him out and knowing that she wasn’t ready to hear the demon who was practically her brother make vague but ominous accusations against the man she loved _again_. “Believe me, I really want to. This would be so much easier if you knew what we’re up against -”

Mira balled the t-shirt in her fist, shutting the drawer with more force than necessary, the slam cutting Alcor off. “Save it.”

“Mira, please!” Alcor reached out to grip her shoulder, and Mira shrugged him off, crossing the room to the closet and staring into it, not really seeing any of the clothes hanging in front of her. “Something big is happening, and I can’t see any of it! I tried to take a look at the future and it’s - it’s like trying to use a kaleidoscope as a telescope. There are too many possibilities, they’re way too varied, and there’s no sign of which ones are most likely, which is really weird. And I think - no, I _know_ it all has something to do with what I saw in Ian’s head.”

Mira spun on her heel, and Alcor did a little midair hop backwards. “How?” she demanded, and he gave her a nonplussed look. “You just said you couldn’t see anything in the immediate future. How do you know?”

The guilty look that flashed across Alcor’s face for a fraction of a second told Mira everything she needed to know.

“I don’t believe this,” she huffed, throwing up both of her hands.

“It’s not like that!” Alcor protested, but he didn’t sound convinced by his own argument. “Look, Mira, there are some souls that are just bad news, but your boyfriend -“

“Nope. I’m not hearing this.”

“Ugh! Mira, would you please just listen to me?”

“No!” Mira paused, breathing hard, a little surprised by her own outburst. Alcor opened his mouth, looking annoyed, and she cut him off. “I don’t need you telling me again that I’m making a mistake, or that I’m playing with fire, or that Ian’s a _creep_! You’ve made yourself incredibly fucking clear, and I’m getting tired of you hovering around like a worried parent. If you really don’t trust me enough to make my own decisions, then maybe you should just make them for me!”

The look of shock that settled over Alcor’s face made Mira almost long to smack it off of him. “I would never -”

“No? You wouldn’t? You’d rather just lie and trick your way into my head so you can mess around and find something in there to use against me?”

She hadn’t thought Alcor’s eyes could go any wider, but they did, until the gold of his irises was ringed completely by void-black. “No...no, that’s not - that’s not me, that’s _not me,_ that’s _-_ ” he started to mumble under his breath, and Mira, finally fed up, cut him off.

“Bill talk? Yeah. Yeah it is.” She put her hands on her hips, feeling herself shaking with anger and just a little bit of fear. “I’m not reassuring you this time. You get so worried about acting like whoever ‘Bill’ was, well, I’m guessing that this was what you were worried about. You _really_ crossed a line, Alcor.” She pointed a finger at the demon, who actually flinched. “I’m giving you one warning. _Stay out of Ian’s head_.”

Mira turned around, eyes flickering over the rows of puffy skirts and brightly-coloured leggings hanging in her closet, looking for something to go with the t-shirt she still held clenched in her left hand. Slowly, she felt the shaking start to slow, the molten feeling in her chest and her abdomen begin to cool with every deep breath she took.

“So that’s what you think?” Alcor’s voice had dropped to a low, dangerous purr, laced with echo and edging into a growl, that made the hairs along the back of Mira’s neck stand up despite the fact that she’d heard him do this voice a thousand times before over silly things like being cut off from the soft-serve ice cream machine. “You think _I’m_ the bad guy.”

Mira squared her shoulders. “I think you’re being prejudiced. And ridiculous.”

“That’s exactly what he’d want you to think!” The purr turned into a snarl, and Mira felt rather than saw the room grow darker, shadows filling up the room like smoke and making her chest feel tight. “He’s just trying to turn us against each other exactly like he did last time, Mabel!”

Mira froze.

It felt literal, like someone had dipped her in liquid nitrogen, like the blood had turned to slush in her veins and ice crystals had formed scraping her lungs and all down her throat.

Alcor appeared in front of her in a small puff of blue flame, his eyes narrowed and nearly all gold, spitting out the occasional spark. “I know you want to trust him, but -”

“Get out of my apartment,” Mira said. The words that she’d meant to sound bold and challenging came out whispery and small instead, and she had to stop and swallow hard.

Alcor seemed to screech to a halt without moving, freezing in place in midair, the gold retreating rapidly across his eyes as they widened until they seemed almost human again. “Mira? What – no, I didn’t mean -”

“Save it for your next Mizar.” Her voice still didn’t seem to want to obey her. She almost sounded like she was about to cry. “Maybe she’ll believe you when you tell her it doesn’t matter who she used to be.”

“Mira, _no_ ,” Alcor said, his voice dropping as a look of disbelieving horror crossed his face, and for an instant, hope swelled up painfully in Mira’s chest and stuck in her throat, making it hard to breathe. He’d - he’d said things before that he didn’t mean, once or twice, when he’d been - not himself, and maybe - “Don’t you see, this is exactly what he wants!”

Mira didn’t think. She just reached back and threw the t-shirt she’d held balled in her fist at Alcor. It unrolled halfway through the air, and fluttered pathetically down to snag on one of his wings.

She drew a deep breath in, feeling it burn against her ribs as she let out a strangled-sounding shout. “Get _out_ of my _apartment!”_

“I’m not going anywhere! You could be in danger right -”

“ _Leave!_ “ Mira leaned forward and shoved the demon, hard. He gave one great sweep of his wings, managing to catch himself just before he went flying into the racks of brightly-coloured clothing behind him.

He shouldn’t have been allowed to sound so reasonable, or so hurt. “Mira, please, we have to work together.”

“ _Alcor.”_ Mira pressed both hands against her eyes, looking up to the ceiling before turning back to meet the demon’s gaze. “I can’t - can’t make you. I’m asking. I’m _begging_. Please. Leave me _alone_.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, gripping the knob on the closet door with the other hand as though it would fly off if she let go.

For a terrible, choking moment, Mira didn’t know what Alcor was going to decide. Her gaze flicked down to her bare toes, and she couldn’t bring herself to raise it again, staring resolutely at the chipped baby-pink polish adorning her toenails instead. Ordinarily, she would have said with absolute certainty that he’d listen to her, that he’d respect her wishes and leave. But nothing about this was ordinary, and she couldn’t face the possibility of looking up and seeing him still hovering there. If he chose not to go, there was nothing she could do about it.

The knowledge that he knew it just as well as she did was like a little ball of solid lead sitting heavy in the pit of her stomach.

Mira didn’t look up until she felt the room lighten, the heavy atmosphere of Alcor’s anger dissipating into the air. The sudden relief of a pressure she’d hardly realised she was feeling hit her almost like a blow, and she sank onto her knees, needing to feel the solid support of the floor underneath her. 

She couldn’t remember ever feeling so small.

She didn’t notice until the phone rang and she tried to go pick it up that she was shaking, so hard she nearly dropped the handset twice. She managed a convincing “Hello?” only on the third try, and there was still a note of worry in Sun-mi’s voice from the other end of the line.

“Mira? Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Mira said shortly. “What’s up?“

“I was calling to talk to you about this research Rosa asked me to do, but...you sound upset. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Mira started, but her voice caught on the end of the word and it cut off in a sob.

“Stay exactly where you are,” Sun-mi said, and the worry in her voice had turned to steel. “I’m coming over.”

“You don’t have to -”

“But I am.” Sun-mi paused for a fraction of a second, then added, “And I’m bringing ice cream. Cake Batter Up! with sprinkles sound good?”

Mira nodded, before realising that Sun-mi couldn’t see her on the other end of the line. “ ‘s.”

“All right.” The phone went dead in Mira’s hand with a _click_.

...

There were voices from the living room when Ian opened the door. That wasn’t worrying, especially since one of the voices was Mira’s. What _was_ worrying was the distress in her voice.

“What’s the matter?” Ian asked, as he walked into the living room. He managed, with what he thought was commendable self-control, not to groan out loud when he saw who Mira was talking to, and tamped down a flutter of irritation at the way Sun-mi’s eyes widened at the sight of him. He nodded once in her direction, before turning all his attention to Mira. “What happened?”

Mira pulled the blanket she’d burritoed herself up in a little tighter around her shoulders, retreating deeper into her cocoon. Wide, shimmering brown eyes blinked out of the depths of the blanket at Ian, and he sighed and walked over to sit beside her. “Will you come out of the blanket and tell me what’s wrong?”

“She had a fight with a friend,” Sun-mi said, her voice strangely tense. When Ian looked over, her eyes were fixed on him in a challenging stare.

“Your childhood pal?” Ian asked Mira, and the blanket burrito bobbed up and down in a nod. He nodded in turn, suspicions confirmed. He didn’t need Sun-mi to tell him what the fight had been about. “Do you want me here, or should I get lost?”

This time, the burrito shook its head vigourously before Ian was done talking. He reached out and put an arm around Mira’s shoulders, and she flopped over to lean against him.

“I suppose this is my cue to leave,” Sun-mi said, getting slowly up from the couch without taking her eyes off of Ian. “But Mira, if you need anything - _anything_ \- just give me a call.”

The blanket burrito nodded, and Mira’s voice emanated from its depths. “Thanks so much for coming over.”

A smile flickered across Sun-mi’s face, vanishing almost as soon as it had appeared. “We’ve got to do this under less unpleasant circumstances sometime.”

She glanced back over her shoulder once as she left, shooting Ian a look that was wary, almost fearful. He couldn’t quite explain the smile that quirked the left side of his mouth at the sight, or the faint glow of satisfaction when she shivered, turning away and walking into the entryway a little too quickly to be casual. Sure, it was fun to mess with her, but now was definitely not the time.

He waited until he heard the door slam shut before turning back to Mira. “Do you want to come out?”

The blanket burrito shook its head.

“Okay. Do you want to talk about it?”

Another shake.

Ian nodded, looking over the coffee table and the empty tub of cake batter ice cream. “Would you like to just sit here like this for a while, then?”

This time, Mira nodded, the head of the blanket burrito bobbing up and down affirmatively. Ian pulled her closer against his side, blanket cocoon and all, and waited for her to rest her head against his shoulder before leaning his own head on hers.

His leg was just starting to fall asleep when Mira said, quietly, “Now I know what you meant.”

Ian took advantage of the opportunity to shift slightly, turning to face her and taking her weight off of his leg at the same time. “Meant about what, stardust?”

Mira didn’t answer for a long moment. When she did speak, it was so quiet and muffled by the blanket that Ian had to strain to hear. “Being insignificant.”

Ian tightened his grip on her shoulder before he even knew he meant to. He reached over and wrapped his other arm around Mira as well, pulling her halfway into his lap and rocking slightly as he held her. He didn’t say anything. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.

He wasn’t sure how long they sat like that before Mira reached up and pushed the blanket away from her head. “Hey there,” Ian said, and she smiled up at him. “How’re you feeling?”

Mira leaned over and bapped her head softly against his chest. “Betterish.”

“Betterish is better than worse.” There was a moment of silence, before he asked, “Do you feel more like talking about it now?”

“Not really,” Mira admitted.

Ian nodded thoughtful agreement, before leaning over to grab the remote from the coffee table. “Okay, then. Let’s see if the latest episode of Political Intrigue: But With Dragons is up yet.”

...

“I shouldn’t have done this.”

Rosa looked up from the computer display in front of her. “And whyever not? It didn’t take you hardly any time at all, and the exclusives you’re gettin’ in exchange should put your name on the map -”

Sun-mi waved one six-fingered hand dismissively. “I had a bad feeling about this from the start, but I was _curious_. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to understand Ian better.” She shut both eyes with a brief grimace, pressing a hand to her forehead right between her eyebrows. “If I’d known what I was going to dredge up, I wouldn’t have gone looking in the first place.”

The sense of unease that had followed Sun-mi into the room was contagious, Rosa realised, and clasped both hands on the desk in front of her to keep from nervously fiddling with her dangling safety pin earrings. “Well, let’s see what’s got you makin’ such ominous statements,” she said, in an effort to lighten the atmosphere. The joke fell flat, and Rosa turned quickly back to the display, sweeping it up off the screen to project into the air. A web of images quickly spread itself out, symbols and buildings and old photos connected by shimmering threads. Triangles featured prominently, many with a single eye, and Rosa couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her when one seemed to flick over to stare at her.

“I found the place you said Ian described from his recurring dreams,” Sun-mi said, reaching into the display and pulling a set of blueprints to the front of the display. Archival footage flickered across them for a moment, blue lights and swaying pines, as virtual walls rose up from the white lines of the blueprints until a model of an elderly wooden A-frame building stood in their place. “It wasn’t hard, even though no one’s seen it in a century or so.”

“No one’s _seen_ it?” Rosa asked, tilting her head slightly to the right as she slowly turned the image hovering before her, sweeping a hand through one of the walls to dispel it and get a look at the floor plan.

“The locals say it grew legs and walked off almost five hundred years ago.” Sun-mi shrugged when Rosa shot her an incredulous look. “It’s possible. The building was originally located in Gravity Falls.”

Rosa blinked.

“Yeah. _That_ Gravity Falls.” Sun-mi gestured, and the model building shifted, the old photographs flying up to hover around it, adding a layer of composite image overtop of it. Rotten shingles, a sagging porch, incongruous stained-glass windows, and a crumbling sign with a missing letter perched on the roof overlaid themselves on the model as Rosa watched. And everywhere, one-eyed triangles looked out from the windows and walls, dotting the furniture throughout the house. “It was a library of the supernatural for a long, long time, nearly as long as it’s been missing. But before that, it was...this.”

“Mystery Hack?” Rosa asked, reading the sign.

“A temple of magic and forbidden knowledge. People came from all over to see its exhibits and hear stories about the creatures on display. It also sold everything from t-shirts to scrying glasses.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so -”

“For at least ten years before the Transcendence.”

Rosa swallowed the rest of her sentence. “But no one really knew anything about magic before.”

“Exactly.” Sun-mi’s face was as grave as her voice. “The people who owned it were spreading information about and belief in the paranatural before it was common knowledge that it even existed. They were located right at the epicentre of the Transcendence. And maybe the most damning thing...” She gestured to the display, and every triangle in the virtual model lit up in a glaring, fiery red. “The whole place was saturated in the demon Cipher’s symbols.”

“You lost me,” Rosa admitted, shifting slightly away from the holographic display. There was something deeply unnerving about all those glowing triangles.

Sun-mi did a double take, adjusting her glasses as she gave Rosa a look of surprise. “Bill Cipher? The demon responsible for the Transcendence? Tried to merge our dimension with his own and unleashed magic on the world? You really haven’t heard of him?”

“Ancient history’s not really my thing,” Rosa admitted, earning her a look that, she was sure, would have been a full-blown eyeroll if she’d been anyone but Rosa Darling.

“He nearly destroyed all life as we know it,” Sun-mi said, shortly. “And all the evidence says that this place, the place your friend has been dreaming about, was a shrine to him. And the base of operations for his _cult_.” 

Rosa stared at the virtual model for a moment before it clicked. “You’re not sayin’ - that Ian -”

“You don’t recover past-life memories without a little magic and a lot of therapy, unless the memories are of something you have a strong emotional connection to...or they’re from your most recent lifetime.” Sun-mi’s voice was almost apologetic, despite the glare she turned on the display and the way she crossed her arms. “Either something deeply meaningful to him happened there, or the demon ate his soul and he’s only just re-entered the cycle now. Either way -”

“You’re sayin’,” Rosa sighed, leaning against the desk.

Sun-mi nodded. “This is why I shouldn’t have gone looking in the first place.”

“Have you told Mira about this?” Rosa asked, hoping she sounded casual enough that it would go unremarked-on, that the surprise in her voice would cover any overearnestness. At least she didn’t have to fake the surprise. Sure, she’d known that Ian must have done or been _something_ serious to get a rise out of Alcor the Dreambender, but being part of a cult that tried to bring about the end of the world was...well, it was definitely more extreme than anything she’d been expecting. 

Sun-mi snorted.

“I’m gonna take that as a no.”

Sun-mi shook her head, still not looking at Rosa. “She’s my friend. And I haven’t been...exactly...supportive of her relationship.”

Rosa nodded, trying to wrangle her features into something resembling sympathy even though she was quietly seething. Had this _whole thing_ been a colossal waste of time? “I understand. But sometimes to do what’s best for the people you care about, you have to do things they’re not gonna like.”

“That’s not -”  Sun-mi shook her head, running her hands through her hair. “If it were that easy, I’d call her right now. But she knows I don’t like Ian. She'd just think I was trying to break them up.” For the first time in several minutes, she glanced over at Rosa. “Maybe if _you_ told her -”

“I don’t think so, sugar,” Rosa interrupted, trying to put a note of sincere apology into her voice as she smiled ruefully. “We barely know each other, I doubt she’d take my word. But I’ll make sure Ian knows about this.” She had to pause a moment before going on. “I don’t know what you may have heard about him, or what you may think of him. But if I know one thing...” She heaved a sigh. “It’s that he loves that girl. He’d give her the moon and stars if he could. He wouldn’t keep this from her. He’ll do the right thing.”

She stopped, dimly grateful that Sun-mi had turned away again, so she wouldn’t see when Rosa smacked the heel of one hand against her forehead. Stupid! Why had she bothered with all this intrigue in the first place, when such a perfect, simple solution had been staring her right in the face?

“Do you really think -” Sun-mi started, turning back to Rosa, and Rosa forced a wide smile, clasping both hands quickly behind her back.

“Dead certain.” She waved a hand through the projection over her desk, shutting the whole thing down. “I’ve got some phone calls to make, but just talk to my assistant on the way out and set a date for that interview, will ya?”

“But I thought -”

“Today?” Rosa smiled a little wider, shaking her head. “Sorry, darlin’, but that’s just not gonna work. Busy schedule, last-minute recordings, and all that, you know how it is.” She debated putting an arm around Sun-mi’s waist to guide her to the door for only a fraction of an instant, before remembering the other woman’s reaction to being offered a hand to shake. Better not to, then. “But thanks again for coming by, and thank you _so_ much for this. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”

“You’re...welcome?” Sun-mi seemed to realise she was being hurried out of the room, glancing over at the door. Rosa nearly cursed when she turned back. “Look...I know you’ve known Ian longer than I have, you’ve probably got a million good reasons to trust him. But please, don’t brush this off. Everybody knows traits carry through lifetimes, and _something_ must have made him think it was a good idea to work for Cipher.”

“Believe me,” Rosa said, with her best practiced smile. “I know exactly how important this is.”

Sun-mi nodded once, decisively, before turning and crossing the few steps to the door. Rosa only barely managed to hold in her sigh of relief until the door clicked closed behind her.

She turned to her computer display, and, with one final glance at the door to make sure that Sun-mi wasn’t about to return for some forgotten item or idea, said, “Get me the Eternal Wheel Preincarnation Clinic.”

...

The mindscape wasn’t exactly what Dipper would call a pleasant retreat. Sure, it was quiet, with all the dead stillness of someplace abandoned and overgrown, but it was also _boring_. Being deprived of sensation and unable to interact with the physical plane meant that Dipper’s activities were limited to watching what was going on in the world beyond, or trawling through the depths of the vast soup of his infinite knowledge for the answers to deep questions about the nature of reality, the existence of the soul, and what exactly went into fast-food chicken nuggets. Or, as generations of Mizars had successively discovered, sulking.

It wasn’t like Dipper only went to the mindscape when he was upset or angry or moping, but now that he could pop into the physical world whenever he felt like it, for as long as he wanted, there weren’t many better reasons to spend time there. And it was, after all, very convenient to have a place to himself (now that the lesser demons had all finally learned to give him a wide berth) that he could go to when his distress was about to start the walls bleeding and mirrors screaming.

That had been hours (days? minutes? Time ran funny in the mindscape, when he remembered to let it affect him at all) ago, though, and now Dipper was feeling less like turning Mira and Ian’s apartment into an unintentional haunted house. That didn’t mean he wasn’t still upset, though, and he half-wished some upstart demon would show up and try to challenge him, or someone would summon him asking for world domination or the annihilation of the human race, just so he’d have something to rip apart. Something that was definitively, unquestionably, _evil_.

Something he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about wanting to utterly _destroy_ -

_“...this was what you were worried about.”_

Dipper let out a howl that turned every dream in a ten-mile radius into a nightmare about mirrors, clutching at his head. He - he _wasn’t_! He was still himself, more or less, he _wasn’t like Bill_ \- !

_“You’d rather just lie and trick your way into my head so you can mess around and find something in there to use against me?”_

That was what he’d done. That was _exactly_ what he’d done. No matter how much he’d tried to hide it, even from himself, Dipper couldn’t deny that he’d played nice, offered help, just to get unfettered access to Ian’s subconscious. He’d downplayed its importance, made it sound like what Ian would be giving up was practically nothing, when really, it was everything. His dreams, his thoughts, his memories, the very core of his personality...everything that made him more than a walking meatbag, and he’d handed over the keys to Dipper - without even putting an end date on their agreement! Dipper knew, with a sick sinking feeling, that if he wanted to, he could slip into Ian’s thoughts right now and wreak havoc, or just sit quietly and observe, maybe giving him a slight nudge here or there. And - and he’d stolen and eaten all of those residual memories without Ian even knowing they were there in the first place...

If he’d had a physical form, Dipper probably would have been sick all over his shiny leather shoes.

Mira was right. He was acting _exactly_ like Bill.

And, as much as he hated it, Dipper knew he had to apologise.

He managed to spend another indeterminate amount of time hovering aimlessly in the mindscape, trying and failing to convince himself that what he’d realised wasn’t true. He’d really screwed up. It didn’t matter who Ian was, or had been. Dipper was supposed to be better than this. More _human_ than this.

At last, with a sigh that blew away the nightmares his earlier howl had created and sent shivers down the spine of a medium in the middle of a seance two cities away, Dipper turned his attention to the network of stars that served as his eyes, letting garbled flashes of images flicker past until the familiar cyan glow of the soul he was looking for caught his attention. Dipper focused, looking out into the room Ian was in, and nearly choked.

Ian wasn’t the only familiar soul there.

“So why did you want to see me again?” Ian asked, leaning both elbows against the table between them.

The platinum-blonde woman with the five-pointed pastel star stamped into her soul smiled conspiratorially at him. “Do I need a reason to want to spend time with a friend?”

A fist clenched just behind where Dipper’s breastbone would have been if he’d had a real human body, digging in claws as red tinted the edges of his vision. Around the restaurant, dishes and cutlery began to rattle, and in the kitchen, one of the cooks screamed as an entire block of knifes flew out and embedded themselves in the wall by his head. Both Ian and the woman looked up, startled, and Dipper forced himself to hold back his temper. Maybe he’d feel better if he turned them both into smoking piles of ash right here and now, but then he wouldn’t have any idea what plans they might already have set in motion. He’d played into Bill’s hands once before. He wasn’t going to let it happen again.

After a moment of nothing more strange happening, the whole restaurant seemed to shake off the momentary fright. The buzz of conversation started up again, and the woman shot Ian a sympathetic look, reaching out to place her hand over his. “That what you were talking about?”

Ian shook his head, and Dipper seethed silently at the look of forlorn confusion on his face. How dare he look so innocent when he was plotting with _Gideon_ of all people?

He managed to catch himself just before the roof went up in blue flame. 

“Must be,” Ian said, still shaking his head disbelievingly. “I can’t - I thought we were starting to get along, he _helped_ me with - see, this is why I need to know what his problem is! Either that, or I need a really good banishing spell, and I don’t think that’d go over well with Mira.”

The woman patted the back of Ian’s hand, looking around with a wary expression. “I see what ya mean. That could be -”

“Dangerous?” Ian let out a bitter laugh. “He’s already nearly killed me once. And I don’t think he gets it. He could just - just wipe me out, just like that, and I don’t think he really understands or cares what that means to somebody who isn’t an omniscient, omnipotent immortal.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Dipper muttered under his breath, grateful for once that he couldn’t be heard from the mindscape. “I’m not falling for _that_ one twice.”

The woman nodded. “That’s...actually what I wanted to talk to ya about. I thought about what you said, about past lives...and I’ve booked you an appointment at the Eternal Wheel Preincarnation Clinic.”

“What?” Ian gave her a blank look. “Rosa, I can’t -”

“Oh, hush,” the woman interrupted, holding a finger to her red-painted lips with a wink. “What’re rich friends for?“

“Exploiting to game the system,” Ian sighed, with a disbelieving smile. “You really don’t have to -”

“You’ll pay me back.” The woman - Rosa? - pushed her chair back, raising a hand, and a waiter on the other side of the room hurried over so quickly Dipper wondered if he’d actually teleported. “Check, please.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna want to know the terms of this agreement first,” Ian said, his smile growing. Rosa batted her eyelashes, but she was smiling too.

“Whyever would you want a thing like that?”

“I’m not the dummy here.” 

They grinned at each other. Dipper weighed the benefits and consequences of setting them both on fire.

Rosa broke first. “Your company’s payback enough.”

“Wow, that’s a little saccharine even for you,” Ian said, and Rosa clapped a hand to her chest, drawing back in mock offense.

“Why, Ian Thomas Beale! Do you mean to suggest that my sentiments are anything other than earnest and sincere?”

“Well, considering that last time we saw each other, you told me you were going to steal my girlfriend and called me a bunch of reasonably creative names...yes.”

Ian said something more, but Dipper didn’t hear it. Whatever he was saying was overridden by the refrain of ‘you told me you were going to steal my girlfriend’ ringing in his (currently nonexistent) ears.

Oh.

Oh, _shit._


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for deliberate insensitivity to mental illness and abuse of systemic power late in this chapter.

If you asked Dipper what seeing the future was like, he'd probably say it was like a beach. Well, first he'd probably go on a ten-minute tangent about multiverses and probability, but eventually, he'd come around to the beach. 

A million million grains of sand, each microscopically different from each other, but all still enough like each other that you could tell the beach was white, or yellow, or pink. People tended to move in predictable ways, once you knew what drove them, and because people tended to be predictable, so did futures. Technically, there were endless possibilities, but most possible futures differed only microscopically. By looking at them all together, you could usually see the general shape of things to come.

This wasn't usual.

This was a pebble beach, a glass shard beach, each possible future unique and distinct in shape, colour, size, without having to put it under the microscope. And each was just as possible as the last. The way they kept shifting only made it worse. Trying to find 'the' future in all of that was like looking for a single grain of sand on a beach covered in identical grains of sand, while the tide was washing continuously in and out.

Dipper had gone in looking for something to make sense of everything, and had come out with nothing but a headache. He still had no idea whether Bill and Gid- _Rosa,_ and Ian, dammit, if he was going to be personally involved in people’s current lives he should at least try to remember their names - were plotting something together, whether what Rosa had apparently said was a joke or the truth, what Ian knew about it, whether _Mira_ knew any of this was going on...

And Dipper might be stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid. Mira already wasn’t talking to him because he’d jumped to conclusions once. He couldn’t take a chance on that happening again. He needed to _know_ what was going on, and why, and he needed to be able to prove it, so that even Mizar, who through nearly every incarnation so far had kept a tendency to listen to her heart over her head, couldn’t deny it. 

For a moment, hurt anger flared up inside Dipper, before he tamped it back down into an ember. No. There was no way he was going to stand back and let the consequences fall on Mira, just to rub it in her face that he had been right and get her back for choosing Ian over him. She was - no. She wasn’t his sister, but she was as close as she could ever be. She was his twin star. And, Dipper had to admit, she’d put up with a _lot_ of his bullshit over the years. He wasn’t going to abandon her now out of some petty desire for revenge. He’d learned.

And speaking of having learned, it was suddenly clear to him, as he withdrew from the jumble of confusing futures and turned reflexively towards the stack of well-thumbed memories from a long-ago summer, just what he’d done wrong. The world went rainbow and stark white as the memory unspooled around him, all his mistakes more blinding than the portal.

 _Listen to your head_.

He’d tried - again - to appeal to Mizar’s head, not her heart. She’d known him her whole life. She trusted him. He shouldn’t have strained that trust, he should have _used_ it. Shored it up by presenting her with some sort of evidence, maybe, but he really should have appealed to her emotions, their relationship, her image of him.

_Do you really think I’m a bad guy?_

There was still time. All he had to do was make a sincere enough apology, play on her soft-hearted sympathy, maybe shed a few tears...and then, once she believed he was contrite, beg her to trust him.

It’d be so easy -

Dipper gave himself a shake, snapping his fingers. The memory folded back in on itself, slipping away somewhere where it wouldn’t be noticed until it was needed again. That had been...close. Too close. Although an apology wasn’t a bad idea, so long as he could show Mira that he really meant it and he wasn’t just trying to use her emotions against her to manipulate her into acting the way he wanted.

Even though he was incorporeal and didn’t really have a spine for shivers to run down, a shiver ran down Dipper’s spine anyway.

Too close.

He wanted to blame Ian for being a bad influence, but the truth was he probably wouldn’t have realised how far gone he already was if it weren’t for the stupid ex-demon. After all, without him, Dipper never would have been pushed over the edge and forced to realise how murderous he’d let himself become, never would have argued with Mira and had her throw all the little manipulations he’d gotten so good at rationalizing that he'd hardly even noticed he was doing right in his face...

And there was a faint possibility that part of the reason Dipper was worried that a Gideon might have designs on Mizar again was because it would mean they’d try to remove Ian from the picture. Which would obviously be heartbreaking for Mira, and really hard on her. And besides, Dipper wanted to be able to do the honours of disposing of Ian himself. It had nothing to do with the fact having Ian around wasn’t as completely terrible as Dipper had initially thought, that it could be entertaining to rile Ian up, or to hang out with someone whose mind sometimes worked like his. Or that maybe there were silver linings to the triangular-shaped cloud he cast over Dipper’s immortal existence. 

Yep. Dipper had to find out what, if anything, was going on with Rosa and shut it down fast (without resorting to murder if at all possible; if Mira liked her, she’d never forgive him), so that he could go back to quietly hating Ian in peace.

Luckily, the past and present weren’t nearly as confusing as the future.

Dipper followed the powder-blue trace of Rosa’s intentions back through the past month or so, frowning as he saw how deftly and how thickly she’d woven herself into Mira’s life. How had he missed this? How had she avoided him? Had she meant to do it? He was almost certain she had a trace of the Sight, or something like it, or she wouldn’t have been able to duck under his radar for so long, but he had no idea if she’d orchestrated that as she appeared to be orchestrating Ian’s discovery of his past self.

Thankfully, it was much easier to find out whether Ian was in on whatever she was planning. All it really took was skipping back in his memories to one conversation where Ian had asked her (surprisingly politely, Dipper would have expected threats under the guise of friendliness) to please stop treating Mira’s friends like her staff, and a laughing mention that ‘you spend more time with my girlfriend than I do!’. Ian didn’t suspect a thing, which was a mixed bag. On the one hand, it was one more point against his having some sort of master plan in the works. On the other hand, it was going to be a pain convincing either him or Mira that something was going on, especially with Mira not talking to Dipper.

Dipper followed them both to the clinic for Ian’s appointment, watching for any clue that might reveal what Rosa was planning to do with the information, any opportunity to alert Ian and Mira that something was wrong. Instead, he got an eyeful of Ian drumming his fingers on things, fidgeting nervously, looking around the room (and, Dipper noticed, counting the exits) almost compulsively, and glowing an anxious thunderhead purple with just a hint of yellow-orange anticipation until Mira reached over and took his hand, giving it a squeeze. She leaned over and whispered something reassuring that no one else in the room but Dipper could possibly have heard into Ian’s ear, and even though Ian shook his head, the crackling cloud of nervous energy that his aura had become smoothed out some.

Dipper considered, briefly, giving Ian a nudge in the memory centres to mention Rosa’s admission to Mira, but shut that idea down almost as soon as it came to him. Sure, it would only take the tiniest speck of influence, and that would plant the seed of doubt and make Mira more receptive to the truth when Dipper told her (especially since she still unquestioningly trusted Ian), but even thinking about it after what Mira had said to him made Dipper shudder. No. He needed to think more human.

It was only when he caught himself thinking of places around the apartment to hide coded messages to warn them both that Dipper realised he was out of options - well, _human_ options, anyway. There was nothing he could do to explain, no warning he could give that would be heeded, without gaining back Mira’s faith first.

He had to apologise.

Dipper slipped away from the waiting room just as the receptionist behind the desk called out Ian’s name. He just caught a glimpse of Mira shooting her boyfriend an enthusiastic thumbs-up as Ian followed the woman down a hallway beside the main desk, before the waiting room disappeared from Dipper’s view altogether, the familiar landscape of the woods around Gravity Falls (circa 2012) unfurling around him in all the shades of the mindscape.

He’d really pushed it this time. If he was going to apologise to Mira and have her forgive him, Dipper was going to have to do something big, something that would prove to her beyond a doubt that he cared about her for who she was now, not who she’d once been. And for that...

Dipper grinned as he pulled a scrapbook out of thin air. Written across the cover, in glittery puff-paint letters, were the words MIRA MEMORIES.

He was going to need ammunition.

...

It might have been hours, or days, or only seconds later (he’d let time get away from him again) that Dipper hauled himself out of a replay of the time when Mira was eight and desperately wanted the lead in the school play, and slammed the book shut, huffing a lock of hair out of his eyes in frustration. He’d been through every inch, every nook and cranny, of his prodigious knowledge about Mira, and he still had only one idea that _might_ , possibly, be strong enough to earn her forgiveness. It was going to take an enormous sacrifice on his part, and Dipper shuddered just thinking of it.

But...this was for Mizar, for his twin star. He’d do anything to keep her safe, and that meant _anything_. And more than that, this was for _Mira_. This was for the girl he’d just relived an entire lifetime of memories for, the girl who’d created those memories with him in the first place. This was for Mira, the little girl with the big smile, who’d roped him into stealing cookies with her more times than he could count, who’d sacrificed a chocolate rabbit approximately twice the size of her head to get him to take her to prom, who’d forced him to sit still and let her practice gyaru makeup on him for hours (thankfully, she’d abandoned the idea of being an online beauty guru when she’d seen the results). Mira, who’d shared her secrets and shed her tears and celebrated her successes with him. Mira, who’d tentatively shared her story ideas and her hopes for her future as a writer with him when she’d been too scared to admit it out loud to anyone else.

Mira, who, despite how she felt about being Mizar, had never once imagined that future - or any future - without him in it.

This was for his best friend in the world. It was worth it. It would be worth it.

Dipper braced himself, and reached out through the link that tied him to Mizar, stepping past the wards Mira had set up around the apartment.

...

Mira was in the middle of a particularly tense scene (the princess had snuck into the royal library late at night to hunt down information about the kingdom’s ignoble past, and was slowly growing aware that a shadowy figure was stalking her between the darkened stacks) when she realised that something in the air had changed.

She felt the scowl that crossed her face slowly start to erode as the seconds ticked on and nothing happened. If Alcor was here, at least he’d had the courtesy to pretend he hadn’t just waltzed past her wards like they were nothing - which, to him, they were. She tried to ignore the nearly-imperceptible shift in the atmosphere that meant the demon was around and go back to her writing, but she only managed two sentences before realising she’d been so distracted she’d written the same thing twice. 

It was then that she heard the voice from the living room.

It echoed slightly with the otherworldly reverb of Alcor’s, but it couldn’t be Alcor’s voice. For one thing, it was too high. For another, it was _singing_.

Mira pushed herself up out of her chair, tiptoeing across the room to the closet. She reached around the door and pulled her trusty baseball bat from a shadowy corner behind the petticoats. If the enchantments cast over its length didn’t take care of whatever was in her living room, then three and a half feet of lightweight but surprisingly strong aluminum wrapped in razor wire should do the trick.

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to see when she slipped around the entryway into the living room, but it definitely wasn’t her old puppet theatre. Mira stopped in the doorway, nearly dropping her bat. Dimly, she realised that this could be some kind of trap, but she was too surprised and confused by the appearance of a childhood toy she hadn’t expected to ever see again to do much more than stare.

It took her nearly a full minute to realise that the singing voice was coming from a marionette, which was being clumsily danced across the stage of the puppet theatre by inexpert hands. As she drew closer, Mira could see that the marionette was dressed in black, a smart suit with tails and tiny gold buttons, a miniature top hat floating slightly above its scruffy brown curls. It stopped still as Mira approached, its voice cutting off abruptly, and looked up at her with gold-on-black glass eyes before stiffly opening its wooden jaw and beginning its song again from the start.

Mira couldn’t stifle a giggle at the lyrics, even though she actually did drop her bat to clap both hands over her mouth trying to hold it in.

“ _I’m Alcor and I was wrong;_

_I’m singing the Alcor Wrong Song_

_I didn’t trust Mira’s judgement_

_and now I’m in a nasty predicament_

_doo doo doo I think there were some more words here? I don’t really remember_

_Alcor Wrong Soooooooong!”_

The marionette threw out both arms (after a couple of false starts that caused it to do high kicks instead) and, though it shouldn’t have been strictly possible with its wooden face, gave Mira a sharp-toothed grin. Mira tried with little success to hold back a grudging smile as she clapped.

“I thought you hated puppets?” she asked, as the marionette took a bow. “And singing.”

“I do,” the Alcor-marionette squeaked, and vanished abruptly from the stage in a puff of blue smoke and gold sparks. An instant later, another showy puff of smoke deposited the real Alcor in the living room in front of Mira, the look of contrition on his face almost enough to melt her heart. “Actually, puppets freak me right out. Which is why I thought this would show you how serious I am when I tell you I’m sorry, and I want to do better.”

Mira crossed her arms, studying Alcor’s face carefully for any sign of deception, any hint of the glint in his eye she’d come to recognise as a sign that he wasn’t quite...himself. When she found nothing of the sort, she said, carefully, “All right, I’m listening.”

Alcor nodded to himself, looking up at the ceiling as he blew out a breath. When he spoke, the words came out in a rush. “I was a jerk to you about your boyfriend and I’m sorry.” He glanced over at Mira, who only nodded for him to continue. “And when you got mad about me for that, which was...” He sighed. “Totally justified, I said some things that made it sound like I didn’t care who you are either, just about who you used to be. And that’s - that’s not true.”

He looked like he was about to say something more, but Mira held up a hand and Alcor stopped, almost in the middle of his sentence. “No. You don’t get to say that. All of this bullshit is because you can’t seperate me and Mizar.”

For an instant, Alcor looked like she’d slapped him, a look of pure shock and affront crossing his face. “I can so,” he said, sounding so exactly like a petulant twelve-year-old that Mira had to laugh.

“You _can’t_. You don’t like Ian because he hurt you, hurt _Mizar_ , in a past lifetime. You can’t stand me dating him because you still see me as somebody he hurt, not somebody he loves and who loves him back, and you can’t understand why I don’t agree with you for the exact same reason.” Mira took a step forward, and Alcor leaned backwards as she jabbed a pointed finger at his chin. “You called me _Mabel_.”

“That was an accident!” Alcor protested, his wings flaring out.

“It’s the kind of accident you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t already been thinking of someone else!“ Mira resisted the urge to stamp her foot, taking a deep breath instead. “And even now, you’re arguing, instead of listening to me or thinking about what I’m saying. You can’t get it through your head!”

“Mira,” Alcor said softly, and it was only because of the contrast in their volumes that Mira realized she’d been slowly raising her voice. “I – look, I know I’m not all that good at remembering human stuff sometimes -”

“Oh, wow. If that’s not the understatement of the year.” Mira crossed her arms over her chest, fixing Alcor with an unimpressed glare. He opened his mouth, but she held up a finger, cutting him off. “I’m not finished! You’re always telling me to keep you grounded, or asking me to - to spritz you with holy water when you’re acting creepy. You want me to remind you to be human. Well, this is me reminding you. Human beings don’t like being treated like they’re interchangeable.”

“I don’t -” Alcor started, drawing himself up, but then bit off the rest of his own sentence, throwing up his hands and shaking his head as he slouched forward. “I’m trying to _apologise_ to you! Why are you getting so worked up about the Mabel thing? It was a slip of the tongue, it doesn’t mean I don’t care about you!”

“Wow, then I guess I have no reason to be angry! Guess I was just being irrational and overemotional again and I should just shut up, is that it?”

“Would you just _listen_ to me?” Alcor exploded, and Mira exploded right back, ignoring the sudden stench of sulfur and the scorch marks on the walls around her.

“No! This time you are going to listen to _me_ , okay? Maybe - maybe I share a soul with your original Mizar, maybe it does belong to you, maybe somewhere back in my distant history, I _was_ somebody named Mabel, but that’s not who _I_ am! I am a _person_! I am _my own_ person! I’m not -” Words failed her, and Mira gestured to the puppet theatre instead. “I’m not just a doll or, or, a marionette dressed up in different clothes that you can just pull the strings of and make dance! I’m important because I’m _me_ , not just because I’m Mizar, and you can’t see that. Do you even care that we’re seperate people? Can you even tell your Mizars apart anymore? Will you even remember me, or am I just another indistinguishable face on your same stupid old _slave_?”

Mira stopped, breathing hard, the first faint traces of fear starting to trickle in around the edges. Alcor was staring at her wide-eyed, the gold of his eyes ringed completely with black, looking like he’d never seen her before, and a tiny little voice somewhere deep in the back of her brain whispered, _Good_. Maybe she’d finally stunned him into actually listening.

“I’m sorry,” Alcor finally said, and his voice was as quiet as Mira had ever heard it, low and hardly echoing at all.

“Are you really? Because I still don’t know if you get it. You scared the shit out of me, you know that?“ Mira had to swallow hard, tilting her head back to glance up at the ceiling for a moment before she went on. “You could do whatever you want with me. You could kill anyone you don’t like, force me to act like - like whatever you want me to, and there’d be nothing I or anybody else could do about it. Do you get it? Do you understand why it’s so important that you listen to me when I tell you what I think and what I want? Because you don’t know! You can’t just assume you know! I’m not - I’m not _Mabel!_ ”

Alcor drew back further, tucking his wings in close against his back.

“Maybe she was just fine with all of this, whoever she was, but I’m a different person, Alcor,” Mira said, after a moment’s thought. “And maybe that means I’m not - as good as she was, or as kind, or _whatever_. But I care about you, you big -  stupid - you _jerk_ , and I want to believe you care about me too. Enough to at least remember I’m _me_.”

“I know,” Alcor said, and his voice was barely above a whisper. “I know, I - she’s gone.”

Mira stopped, biting off the torrent of words that were still hammering against her forebrain, begging to finally be let out. She’d been carried away enough by her anger that she hadn’t realised how pale Alcor had gone, how quiet he’d been. Usually, he’d have given as good as he got, have gotten indignant and poofed off by now insisting that he was right, not just hovered there and taken it.

She realised what was about to happen a moment too late to stop it. Before Mira could say anything, Alcor had already vanished, leaving only a lingering scent of pine, and Mira’s puppet theatre, looking forlorn and out of place. 

Mira cleared her throat, suddenly and strongly aware of the silence, and said loudly, “Thanks, but that dialogue sounds way too melodramatic. I think I’ll rewrite that section,” just in case the neighbours had overheard. She turned, glancing over her shoulder at the puppet theatre as she went, and retreated back to the bedroom, away from the accusing glare of the puppet theatre’s empty stage.

...

Alcor didn’t return that night.

Mira didn’t summon him back.

She didn’t leave the bedroom again until she heard the door open and shut, and warm, rough hands lifted off her glasses and pressed softly over her eyes, plunging her into the dark. A shiver raced down Mira’s back as a hot breath brushed over her neck, and Ian’s voice whispered into her ear, “Guess who?”

“Oh, get off!” Mira grumbled, swatting at her boyfriend’s arm. Ian laughed, close to her ear, and pressed a kiss to her neck before dropping his hands. “And give me back my glasses.”

“You should wear them more often, they’re cute,” Ian said, as he tried to settle the square black frames back onto her nose.

“They are not. They’re embarrassing. I’d get the enchantment, but -”

“Yeah. It’s a major investment. But it’s still cheaper than contacts in the -”

“- long run, yeah, but I’d have to get a bank loan to pay for it now.” Mira stuck out her tongue and fixed her glasses so they sat straight on her face. “Speaking of ruinously expensive magical procedures, got your results yet?”

Ian leaned over the back of her chair to wrap his arms around Mira, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Nope! They did say it could be up to a week before I heard anything, though.”

Mira brought a hand up to place carefully over his. “Are you worried?”

Ian didn’t speak for a moment, unclasping his hands to grasp hers. Finally, he said, “Scared sick. But I’m keeping busy, I’ll be okay. Are _you_ worried?”

“No,” Mira said, a little too quickly. She couldn’t see Ian frown, but she knew he must be, and tried too slowly to turn her face away.

“Something’s eating you. You look like you’ve been crying.”

“What? No, no, I -” Mira tried to force a laugh, and stopped midway through. “Yeah, I dunno, maybe a little bit. I just - Alcor tried to apologise today and I screamed at him until he ran away.”

“Does that have anything to do with the miniature opera house in our living room?” Ian asked, and Mira huffed a laugh, a real one this time.

“It’s still there, huh.” Mira sighed, the first few lines of the song that Alcor’s puppet had sung running through her head. “Babe, I think maybe I really fucked up.”

Ian hummed thoughtfully into Mira’s ear. “Well, what do you expect me to do about it?”

“Make me feel better?”

Ian sighed, and gave Mira a comforting squeeze, before saying in a voice that was anything but comforting, “Well, we’re all going to die.”

Mira paused, craning her neck to look over at her boyfriend out of the corner of her eye. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

Ian returned her look, letting go of her and stepping back from the office chair. “It’s not,” he said, in a tone that seemed to suggest that this should have been obvious.

“Then why did you say it?”

“It’s motivating.”

Mira spun around on her chair to look Ian in the eye. “Motivating,” she repeated disbelievingly. 

Ian shrugged. “Yeah. You only get so much time. We’re really good at pretending to forget about it, so good we even convince ourselves sometimes - nothing personal, it’s just a self-aware-consciousness-trapped-in-a-doomed-sack-of-decaying-meat thing.”

“Wow,” Mira said sarcastically, narrowing her eyes. “That’s definitely a reassuring and optimistic way to look at things.”

“What, can’t handle the truth?” Ian gave Mira a wink, draping one arm over her shoulders and nearly falling over when her chair started to spin in the opposite direction. She barely managed to smother a giggle as he caught himself, leaning all his weight against the armrest on his free arm. “Look, it’s uncomfortable, and we spend most of our short insignificant lives trying to avoid the knowledge, but sometimes you just need a reminder to put things in perspective. Do you really want to waste any more of your limited time not speaking to your best friend?”

Mira didn’t answer. Instead, she stuck both legs straight out in front of her, blowing out a long breath and thumping her head back to rest in the crook of Ian’s shoulder.

After what felt like hours, but was probably only minutes, of breathing in Ian’s familiar scent of graphite and sweat and flannel fuzz and just the faintest hint of inexplicable ozone, Mira sighed, and said, “You have a deeply weird idea of what makes people feel better.”

“Would you be feeling any better right now if I’d patted you on the head and told you everything would work out eventually if you just trusted the universe?”

“Maybe,” Mira muttered defiantly, before turning her head to bury her face in Ian’s arm, mumbling “Probably not,” into the flannel of his sleeve.

“Yeah, that’s right. Because the universe doesn’t give a shit either way. And getting up and dealing with things feels so much better than trying to push your worries away until they overwhelm you into total paralysis! Trust me, I’m an expert.” 

Mira let out another huff that might have sounded like a laugh at that, and Ian gave her a squeeze. “Look, whatever you said, Alcor probably needed to hear it. But if he came here to apologise, then at least you know he’s listening.” He let out a sigh that sounded more thoughtful than disappointed. “At least it’s a place to start.”

“I know, I just - he’s so...” Mira let out a long, exasperated breath. “ _Clueless_. And he doesn’t listen. Not really listen. And he called me by somebody else’s name, and - I just don’t know. I don’t know.”

She could hear the sob in her own voice, and hated herself for it, as she muttered, “I don’t even know if he’s really my friend.”

Ian was quiet, staring at the wall just above and to the left of her computer. Mira said his name once, and then again, a little louder, giving him a light jab with her elbow in his side, and Ian gave himself a quick shake before turning to Mira with an unconvincing smile.

“Sorry, stardust. Look, he is a demon, after all.”

Mira nodded, looking glumly down at the smiling cartoon milk carton and cookie on the front of her oversized pyjama shirt.

“But,” Ian continued, without missing a beat, “he’s also a demon who conjured up some kind of...actually, I have no idea what that theatre thing in our living room is, but whatever that is, just to try to apologise to you.”

Mira nodded again, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. “What do you think?” she asked, finally.

“I think you’re going to have to figure this one out for yourself.” Ian patted her shoulder gently, before pulling her into a hug, pressing a kiss to her forehead just between her eyes. “But if you want to talk it out, I’ll listen.”

Mira leaned forward, wrapping both arms around Ian’s middle, and drew in a deep breath as he held her tight. “Thanks,” she whispered into his shoulder, and got an answering squeeze in return.

...

Mira left for work early the next morning. She also left a note asking Ian to do the dishes before he left for the studio.

Ian glanced at the mountain of dirty dishes standing piled by the sink, and groaned.

He hooked up his phone to the speaker port on the wall and threw on a playlist. Jazzy trumpet and piano swelled to fill the small kitchen, accompanied by a mellow croon.

“ _Stars shining bright above you,_

“ _Night breezes seem to whisper, ‘I love you’,_

_“Birds singing in the sycamore trees...”  
_

Ian hummed along as he turned on the faucet. “Dream a little dream of me...”

A sharp rap on the door cut him off just as he was squeezing soap into the sink. Ian frowned as he put the bottle back in place behind the sink and shut the water off. He hadn’t heard the buzzer for the main building entrance.

The music faded as Ian left the kitchen for the entryway. He tapped the peephole screen, activating the camera fixed to the outside of the door, and gave it a few quick thumps to make it work properly. Three men in mirrored sunglasses, sober dark suits, and coiled wires leading into their ears stared back at him from the screen.

Ian took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders and straightening his flannel shirt. Even though the men outside couldn’t see him, he wished suddenly that he was dressed for show, not for practicality. There was something about having a crisp pressed dress shirt and bow tie that was like putting on a suit of armour. Or maybe a cloaking shield was a better metaphor?

He cleared his throat and tapped the button on the touchscreen to turn on the speakers. “Can I help you gentlemen?” he asked, trying not to let the shiver of fear that was coiling in the pit of his stomach edge into his voice. This was some kind of mistake, some kind of misunderstanding -

“Ian Thomas Beale?” The man standing closest to the door, the one with the impressive white walrus moustache, took off his sunglasses and pulled a flat black something that looked a little like a wallet from inside his suit jacket. He held it up, and it fell open to reveal an official-looking badge and ID. “We’d like to have a word with you.”

Ian’s breath caught in his throat and lodged there. He heard his own voice saying, “Of course,” and saw, rather than felt, his own hand reaching out to unlock the door and swing it open. Everything seemed a little distant, separated from him by a slowly swelling static of panic.

He wasn’t sure how the three men ended up in the apartment, how the moustachioed man wound up leaning against the kitchen table while the other two looked over the apartment. Ian knew he’d said more after ‘Of course’, had probably invited them in, but his head was full of thick grey fog and his mouth was running on autopilot as he tried to remember how to breathe. Slow. Steady. _Inhale. Exhale._

“Sit down, son,” the moustachioed man said, gesturing to a chair across the table. He made no move to sit himself.

_Inhale. Exhale._

“Thanks, but I’ll stand,” Ian said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans so that the agents wouldn’t see them shaking. 

The moustachioed man gave him a long, searching look, before nodding once. “White, get the door,” he said, to one of the other dark-suited men. The agent nodded, and turned to shut the apartment door behind him. Ian sucked in a long breath, trying to remind himself that the walls weren’t actually closing in, trying not to look around for another exit.

He failed. There was an agent standing to either side of the partition keeping the kitchen from the living room, boxing him in.

_Inhale. Exhale.  
_

_Whatever you do, don’t lose your head._

“What can I do ya for?” Ian asked, forcing himself to sound easy, unconcerned, as he leaned back against the counter. He managed, after a moment, to work up a grin. He could do this. It wasn’t much worse than meetings at work. He could handle this.

The moustachioed man’s equally impressive, shaggy white eyebrows drew together almost imperceptibly into a frown as he studied Ian’s face, and Ian felt his grin falter. He managed, with some difficulty, not to cross his arms over his chest. He’d look defensive, like he had something to hide. Instead, he leaned his right hand against the counter, mirroring the moustachioed man’s pose. 

The moustachioed man’s frown grew deeper, and he let go of the kitchen chair he’d been leaning against to clasp his hands behind his back. So he _was_ watching for body language, and he knew the basic tricks for making people feel comfortable around you, making people trust you.

Clearly, he didn’t trust Ian. And now that he knew Ian had tried to manipulate him, he wasn’t going to.

The music swelled to a crescendo in the tense silence, the singer’s warm voice tenderly crooning, “ _Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you..._ ”

_Inhale. Exhale._

The moustachioed man gestured to the agent standing on the other side of the kitchen table, who handed over a sleek black file. Ian was expecting a screen to light up on the front, but instead, the moustachioed man only looked thoughtfully at the file for a few long seconds, before tucking it under his arm and looking back up at Ian. “Son, you have a unique opportunity before you to help your government keep our fair country and millions of lives safe.”

Ian’s mind blanked. There was a trap somewhere in that sentence, but it wasn’t at all one that he’d been expecting. “What kind of opportunity?” he asked warily, as much to buy time as actually out of any hope that he’d get an answer, watching the moustachioed man’s eyes carefully. Too late, he remembered to blink. Staring down a government agent wasn’t exactly going to make him look friendly and non-threatening.

The moustachioed man blinked too, turning away to set the file down on the kitchen table. Despite himself, Ian took a step closer, before realising he should have played it cool, pretended he wasn’t interested in whatever was in the file. It was too late to stop now, though, so he took the two more steps to stand over the table, looking down at the slim black folder.

“The kind of opportunity that only comes around once in a thousand years,” the moustachioed man said, and Ian’s head snapped up to meet his gaze again. The moustachioed man had taken a step back when Ian approached the table, and he was now standing about five feet back, watching Ian intently. There was something searching in the way he looked at Ian’s face, like he was trying to remember where he’d seen Ian before, or - or like he was looking for an aura. Of _course_. Government agents would be equipped with lenses to approximate the Sight, if they weren’t selected for it already. “Why don’t you come along with us and I’ll explain it all in the car.”

“I don’t think so,” Ian said. _Inhale. Exhale._

The moustachioed man’s expression hardly changed, but suddenly he looked sharper, more wary, less friendly than he had at the door, if that was possible. “I thought you might say that. Grey? White?”

The agents standing at either end of the kitchen partition started forward, closing in until they stood one on either side of Ian. Ian tried to draw deep, steady breaths, but his head still started to spin, like the air in the room had thinned to mountain-peak atmosphere around him, and all his muscles seemed too tightly strung, coiled and ready to flee. “What -” he started, his voice cracking, and he coughed once to clear his throat, taking a step forward to put some space between himself and the two agents hemming him in. “Look, what is this? What do you want? How do I know you’re even working for the government? I’m calling the police.”

He moved to go get his phone, but the moustachioed man reached out and placed a hand gently, but heavily, on his arm. Ian shook him off, taking a step back and nearly tripping over the polished shoes of one of the other agents.

“We’re from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Arcane Division,” the moustachioed man said, drawing out his ID and badge again and holding them out to Ian. The badge looked real, and the face on the ID was clearly the same bald-headed, walrus-faced man in front of him. The name beside the slowly-rotating portrait was simply BROWN. 

“Well, I’m not harbouring any rogue youkai or practicing necromancy,” Ian snapped, before choking back the rest of his response. Biting Agent Brown’s head off wouldn’t help. He entertained a brief fantasy of something fanged and gigantic actually biting the head off of the man in front of him, walrus moustache and all, before snapping back to the moment. “Unless you arrest me, I’m under no obligation to go anywhere with you. And I haven’t done anything that would warrant an arrest, much less the attention of the Arcane Division.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain about that,” Brown said, with the faint suggestion of a frown crossing his face again. “But we don’t need to arrest you. Under section C-618 of the Control of Arcane Beings act, we can detain you indefinitely if we judge that you pose a significant threat to human lives or safety.”

_Inhale. Exh-_

“I _am_ human!” 

Both the other agents stepped closer, too close, hovering over Ian and seeming to suck up all the air. He tried to slow his breathing, aware of the way his heart was starting to hammer against the cage of his chest, aware that the rising wave of panic was going to close over his head, and unsure of how long he could hold it at bay. “You can’t just -”

“In this case,” Brown said, flipping open the black folder on the table to reveal a set of neat, tidy forms, “we can.” Forms on paper. _Paper_. The only form of record-keeping that was guaranteed unhackable. They weren’t taking any chances, and Ian had to ball his hands into fists to keep from reaching out and tearing the forms to shreds. “It has been left to my discretion to reclassify you, if necessary, to an SS-class nonhuman. In which case, I would be authorized to use whatever force I deem necessary in subduing and detaining you. And you know, you do already have a history of mental instability. I wouldn’t be unjustified in fearing for my safety, or taking steps to protect myself.”

Brown reached out and rested a hand on Ian’s shoulder, heavy as fate and dully warm through the fabric of his shirt and t-shirt. “Now, I don’t think either of us want that, son. And it doesn’t have to be that way. All you have to do is come along with us quietly.”

Sometime during the conversation, the song had ended, another song taking its place. Ian barely heard it, barely heard anything. He was dimly aware that he was shaking, that he shouldn’t have to concentrate this hard on breathing and he was probably starting to hyperventilate, but horrible possibility after horrible possibility kept unspooling in his head and Brown’s hand was still there on his shoulder and everything was spiralling away out of his control and there was _nothing he could do -_

“Why,” Ian managed to ask, between rabbit-quick fluttering breaths. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the pristine white pages against the stark, flat black folder on the table in front of him, the sharp black letters like links in a chain binding him helplessly into a series of futures each more unthinkable than the next.

Brown gave him a pat on the shoulder. “What was that, son?”

“Why?” Ian nearly shouted, swallowing the word down just in time. “Why are you _doing_ this?”

He forced himself to look up and into Brown’s eyes, hoping for even a flicker of compassion he could appeal to, and saw nothing but cold, glacial blue, the detachment of a scientist peering down a microscope at a spider, clinical interest mingled with fear and disgust. Ian took a step back before he even realised he meant to, out of Brown’s grip, running up against one of the other agents. Under the screaming flood of terrified thoughts crowding his head, a faint spark of something fierce and proud flashed through his chest and vanished just as quickly. They _should_ be afraid -

“You recently had preincarnation testing done at a clinic in town,” Brown said, in that same steady voice he’d used so far, giving away no hint of emotion. “Your results were unusual enough to attract our attention.”

He reached over, and flipped the forms over to reveal another sheet of paper, this one with Ian’s full name printed neatly at the top. It was another form, but every tidy check-box was instead marked with the word ANOMALY in glaring red ink. Ian’s eyes flicked to the bottom of the page, to two lines of red type.

SUBJECT FAILS TO REGISTER ON KNOWN SCALES. ALGORITHMAGIC POINTS TO NONHUMAN AS NEAREST MATCH.

Brown leaned over to look Ian in the eye. For the first time since he’d turned up at Ian’s door, the faintest hint of a smile seemed to lift the corners of his moustache. 

“We looked into it,” he said, reaching out and turning over the page. “We had some trouble believing our own calculations. It’s not every day that the reincarnation of Bill Cipher falls into your lap.”

Brown’s moustache continued to flutter, the lips underneath it obviously moving in speech, but Ian couldn’t hear anything but buzz. There was a strange underwater ringing in his ears as he stared down at the yellowed, brittle, impossibly familiar page resting in the file in front of him, the elegant curling script and the frantic red block letters, the rusty-coloured stains of a long-ago spatter that could only be blood.

A solid black triangle stared back at Ian from the ancient, crumbling page with a single wide eye.

Brown’s hand fell onto his shoulder again, and Ian whirled, pushing him away. He needed out, he needed _air_ , he needed to get _out_ from under that watching eye, he needed not to have his head spinning and filling up with phantom laughter...

“Son -” Brown started, and Ian straightened up, meeting his eyes again.

“ _Stop_ calling me that!”

Brown held out both hands, taking a step forward. Ian tried to move backwards but found himself flanked, again, each of the other agents taking one of his arms and holding him in place. “This must come as a shock to you, son, but I need you to calm down.”

“ _Calm down_?!” Ian pulled against the steady grips of the two other agents, panting wildly, feeling his heart racing like it was trying to explode. The eye of the drawing in the file was _following_ him, it wasn’t his imagination, couldn’t be, he could feel it on his back and under his _skin_ -

Ian tore free of the agent to his right first, and went limp, dropping all his weight on the arm of the other agent, who let go with a shout. Brown yelled, “Put him down, _now_!” but Ian ignored him, lunging forward to dash the file off of the kitchen table. Papers flew, the triangle with its single staring eye gliding off across the kitchen floor as the forms slid under the table.

Something hit Ian in the shoulder, hard, and his vision swam as his legs abruptly gave out underneath him. Angry, frightened voices blurred into a buzz as he hit the ground, arms yanked roughly behind his back and a knee pressed in-between his shoulders, the world going blurry and distant as sensation faded.

The last thing he heard before the dark closed in on him was the sound of echoing, delighted laughter.


	8. Chapter 8

Mira opened the apartment door and was met with music. Delicate piano runs wove in between warm, sleepy brass, a woman’s voice rising over the instruments and crackling with recorded static.

_“...in all the old familiar places_

_that this heart of mine embraces...”_

A smile spread across Mira’s face as she slung her purse over the hook in the closet. It had been a long day, made longer by the fact that she’d spent most of it turning her most recent argument with Alcor over and over in her head. Just stepping into the apartment was like a sigh of relief, and as the soothing, almost lullaby-like tones of the singer’s voice washed over her, Mira could almost feel her stress melting away.

“Honey, I’m home!” she called, jokingly, stepping out of her sequined flats as she walked out of the entryway. 

There was no response but the music.

Mira frowned as she glanced over the empty kitchen, noting the dirty dishes still piled beside the sink, and walked past into the living room. It was empty too, the little light blinking at the top of the TV saying that there was a new episode of something recorded that they’d yet to watch. She ignored it, wandering down the hall to the bedroom. “Babe?” she called, sticking her head into the bedroom and then back out, before noticing that the bathroom door at the end of the hall was shut. “You in there?”

There was still no answer. Mira bit the inside of her lip, shutting the bedroom door behind her. From the kitchen, the song still played faintly. 

_“...in every lovely summer’s day,_

_in everything that’s light and gay,_

_I’ll always think of you that way...”_

“Babe? Are you feeling all right?” Mira reached up and knocked on the bathroom door, only for the door to swing open under her hand. The room beyond was dark and empty.

Something in the pit of her stomach tangled into a small, hard knot.

Mira turned around and walked back down the hallway, looking into the second bedroom they used as an office as she went. As she’d halfway expected, it was empty, her chair still sitting pushed out from her computer desk as it had been last night, like it was waiting for her to sit back down and pick her story back up with the shadowy figure about to pounce on the princess. 

She shut the door, and forced herself to take slow, calm, measured breaths as she turned to the other side of the hall. There was no one in the hall closet, either. Even though she hadn’t really expected to find Ian there, the knot in the pit of her stomach drew tight when he didn’t jump out at her, just playing some sort of ridiculous trick.

She made herself walk, not run, back into the kitchen. Maybe he’d just had a burst of brilliance and had run off to the studio, forgetting he’d left his music on. After all, he forgot to eat on a regular basis. It wouldn’t be that unusual.

The sink was full of clear water, a faint scum of bubbles around the edges. Mira dipped a finger in. The water was cold. It might have been sitting untouched for minutes, or for hours.

She glanced at the dirty dishes still piled by the sink, then over at the stereo port on the wall. Ian’s phone was still plugged in, filling the apartment with the solitary voice of the singer.

_“I’ll be looking at the moon,_

_but I’ll be seeing...you!”_

The brass section came crashing back in, swelling to a final crescendo as the song came to an end. There was a soft click from Ian’s phone, signalling the end of the playlist, and thick, empty silence descended on the apartment.

...

One of the suits from the label was in the middle of saying something pointless about successful genre crossover statistics when the opening bars of Joan Jettski’s ‘Bad Estimation’ blared out of Rosa’s purse. She held up a finger to interrupt the speechless man, unzipping the main pouch of her purse and fishing through it until she pulled out her phone. “Hello?”

“Rosa?” 

A wide smile stole across Rosa’s face, and she stood, ignoring the way everyone else in the meeting turned to look at her with disbelief writ large across their faces. “Mira! So good to hear from ya, sweetpea.”

“ _As I was saying_ ,” the man at the head of the table said, his head turning a furious shade of red that Rosa reflected briefly would make a good lipstick. “Only a small percentage of artists who try to cross genres or introduce a new genre to their repertoire after establishing a solid fanbase in another genre ever make the same -”

“Do y’all mind?” Rosa asked, holding her phone away from her head. “Can’t hear a word my friend’s sayin’.”

The man at the head of the conference table opened his mouth, then shut it again, his jaw flapping like a large-mouth bass pulled up on land. Rosa smiled, bringing her phone back to her ear. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Mira asked, and Rosa laughed.

“Oh, bless you, no! Nothin’ important, anyway.” The man at the head of the table had a white ring around his lips from pursing them in disapproval. Rosa wondered idly whether his head was likely to explode in the near future. “Now. Not that I’m not flattered, but what makes you so eager to talk to me?”

The smile dropped slowly off her face at the clear worry bordering on panic that filled Mira’s voice. “Have you seen or heard from Ian at all today?”

“Wh- Ian? No, sugar, I haven’t,” Rosa answered, brushing aside a flicker of unease. She’d been waiting for something to happen, after all. This wasn’t quite what she’d been expecting - she’d been thinking more along the lines of a tearful phone call from Ian saying Mira had broken up with him - but, well, it was definitely _something_. “Is anything wrong?”

“I can’t get ahold of him.” Mira’s voice rose in pitch as she went on, and Rosa’s feeling of unease grew with each word. “He’s not at the apartment or the studio, and he left his music playing - there was a song with lyrics about ‘old familiar places’ and a cafe, so I went down to the coffee shop where we had our first date, just in case it was one of those weird scavenger hunt things he likes to do for birthday presents sometimes, but they hadn’t seen him either, and he left his phone and his wallet at the apartment and I didn’t w- didn’t know who else to call.” Her voice caught oddly, as though she’d cut her sentence off and taken it in a different direction than she’d originally planned.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t heard anythin’,” Rosa said, with a quick glance up the conference table, at the twenty pairs of eyes staring at her in outrage. “You said he left music playin’?”

“Yes. And the sink was full of water when I got home, like he’d started to do the dishes and got called away partway through. And - wait. What’s -”

Mira stopped talking. Rosa sat with the phone pressed against her ear, listening to the sounds of rustling as the stares from the assembled management team grew steadily more hostile. She was almost relieved at the sound of Mira’s sharp gasp. “What’s the matter?”

“Something’s tripped the wards I put up around the place. This one’s all shattered - but it looks like something hit it from the _inside_.”

The building unease roared into full-blown worry. Rosa shifted her grip on her phone, gathering up her purse and her leather jacket. “Don’t you move an inch, y’hear? I’ll be there in five minutes and we’ll figure out what to do.”

She waited to hear Mira shakily say, “Okay,” before she hung up her phone and stuffed it back into her purse. Rosa started towards the door, and the red-faced man at the front of the conference table finally exploded.

“Miss Darling, are we _boring_ you?”

Rosa stopped, standing by the door, and put her hands on her hips. “Ya know what? You are.”

The red-faced man flapped his jaw a few times more, indignantly.

Rosa tossed her head and straightened her back, turning on her heel. “I ain’t any more afraid of penny-pushers like you than I am of anyone who thinks a fat girl can’t sing. If this album tanks, y’all can blame it on me. But right now, I got a friend who needs me, and that’s more important than statistics and sales figures.”

She reached out to open the door, before glancing back. The management team around the table hadn’t moved.

“And _that’s_ why my fans are gonna stick with me no matter what the hell kind of music I make,” she shot over her shoulder, and strode out of the meeting room, slamming the door behind her.

...

It didn’t take Rosa five minutes to get to the apartment. It took her three.

“Did you catch a helicopter?” Mira asked in disbelief, as she opened the door. Rosa gave her a wide, lipsticked smile and shook her head.

“Teleport. Now wh-” She stopped mid-word, her eyes widening as they fixed on the kitchen table, and Mira could swear they seemed to glow with a faint, pale light. “Did y’all have a fight here recently?”

“No,” Mira said, uneasily, thinking of the night before.

Rosa turned a flat, disbelieving stare on her. “Ya didn’t have a screamin’ match in here this mornin’?”

“What? No! That’s weirdly specific!”

Rosa shook her head again, taking a few slow steps into the kitchen and looking all around her like she’d never seen a tiny apartment kitchen before. “This is all stirred up, anger and tension - it’s recent. Very recent. Somebody’s had a fight in here today.”

“It was definitely today?” Mira asked uneasily, looking around herself.

Rosa turned and gave Mira a puzzled look, raising one perfectly-arched eyebrow. Mira shrugged, with an uneasy smile, and Rosa gave her one last curious look before turning back to the kitchen. “Sometime this mornin’, I’d say.”

“I left early this morning,” Mira said, the knot of worry in the pit of her stomach drawing tight. “I didn’t even see him, just left a note.”

“Then if it wasn’t you -”

“Someone else was in here,” Mira agreed. The words felt like bile rising in her throat. She thought of the broken ward by the door, and dark, slithering suspicion wove its way around her insides. “Shouldn’t we - should I call the police?”

Rosa thought for a moment, before shaking her head. “They can’t do anythin’ until he’s been missin’ for twenty-four hours.”

Mira bit her lip, worrying it between her teeth as she thought. “Would you come look at this?”

She led Rosa over to the apartment door, pointing up at the faint amber glow over the doorframe. Rosa squinted at it, stepping forward to examine the sigils carefully drawn around the door. “You ward against demons but not break-ins?”

Mira felt herself shrink back.

Rosa seemed to notice her discomfort immediately. “Now, I don’t mean nothin’ by it, just that Ian said you and Alcor were close -”

“Oh, he did?” Mira blew out a long breath through her nose. After all, she’d never said _not_ to tell anyone else, though she had kind of thought the fact that she’d waited to tell her own boyfriend until they’d moved in together might have been a clue that she didn’t want it spread around. Still... “He must really trust you.”

For a moment, Rosa looked like she’d just bitten down on something unexpectedly bitter.

“Ya said this was triggered from the inside?” she said, turning back to the amber glow above the door.

“Yeah. See, I don’t usually have wards set,” Mira explained, resolutely ignoring the curious look Rosa gave her. “Who- whatever set it off almost would’ve had to have been here already, and probably set it off trying to leave.” Mira bit down on the inside of her lip until it stung, and she let go quickly, before she could draw blood. The last thing she wanted to do right now was draw the kind of attention that that would call to her. “But...”

Rosa turned an expectant look on her. Mira looked down, towards her right, rubbing her left arm with her right hand. “Those are some pretty serious wards. I’ve...had some practice. Anything less than an SS-class demon would’ve just been bounced back.”

Rosa let out a low whistle. “Ya don’t mess around. But - somethin’ broke this one,” she said, and her eyes went wide as what little colour she had drained from her cheeks. “Y’aren’t suggestin’ -“

“No!" Mira shook her head, running both hands through her hair. “No, that’s not - he wouldn’t. And - and he usually just ignores the wards, they don’t even touch him.”

“That just means he could’ve got in without trippin’ them,” Rosa said, faintly. She’d always been pale, but now she looked almost ghostly. She looked around, as though expecting something to suddenly leap out at her, before turning back to Mira. “You’ve gotta talk to him.”

“No, I -” Mira winced at the memory of her own words, everything she’d said in their argument streaming through her head. Softly, she said, “I can’t.”

“What do ya mean, you can’t?”

“I -” Mira shook her head. She wasn’t sure how to explain that they’d had a fight without spilling out her whole history, or how to explain that she wasn’t ready to apologise, that she still wasn’t sure she even should. Just the thought of asking for help, admitting that the moment Alcor left her she’d gotten hopelessly embroiled in a problem she couldn’t solve on her own, made her feel faintly sick. He’d be smug about it, he’d hold it over her head, for - for months, if not years, and she was having enough trouble just facing the idea that she might not have been entirely justified in the things she’d said to him.

But she also couldn’t stop recalling that day in the studio when she’d first introduced Alcor to Ian, the wicked satisfaction on Alcor’s face as he’d broken Ian’s wrist, the way he’d grinned at Ian’s screams.

There were times when Alcor seemed more like a human being (although a kind of weird one, Mira had to admit) than a demon, and even when he was acting a bit strange, usually a sharp boop on the nose or a spritz from a spraybottle of holy water would bring him back in line. But there were also times, which Mira could thankfully count on one hand, when she wondered how he’d ever seemed human in the first place. That side of him usually stayed locked firmly away, kept at bay by her nose boops and her company. Even if Alcor hadn’t explained that to her after the first time she’d seen him being...not quite himself, Mira would have figured it out sooner or later. Being around humans made Alcor more human.

But there were times, especially when a cult they were bringing down had harmed or meant to harm children, when he went savage and strange and suddenly everything seemed to become a game to him. He’d hurt people for fun, or because it was funny, or just to see what they’d do. He’d destroy things on a whim, because he felt like it, for no reason, obvious or obscure. He’d do anything for some kind of reaction, and laugh in her face if she tried to bring him back down.

He’d say things that - that he didn’t mean. _Couldn’t_ mean. Things that were only meant to hurt. Things that weren’t real. Didn’t matter. Things Mira tried to forget immediately after hearing.

Things she’d never been able to.

In short, Alcor was a demon, and every so often, he proved it.

“...you’re right,” Mira said, realising she’d been turning the heart-shaped charm on her necklace over and over until the chain twisted right up to her neck. “We have to talk to him.”

...

For the last twenty-two hours, Dipper had been letting all his summons go to the answering machine.

It wasn’t just that Mira had a point, or that he’d hardly even realized how she’d been feeling and definitely hadn’t done anything to reassure her, at least not lately. It wasn’t just that he’d gotten so caught up in his own worries that he hadn’t noticed everything wasn’t fine until it all went to hell at once.

It was that Mabel never would have said those things. Mabel had never for an instant doubted her decision to hand over her soul. Or, if she had, she’d done an exceptional job of hiding it. Mabel had trusted Dipper, completely, unquestioningly. She’d believed in him. She’d been rock-solid certain that he deserved her trust. She’d believed with all her enormous heart that he was good, and her conviction had almost made Dipper believe it himself.

And she was gone.

It hadn’t struck him quite this hard in a long time. He’d been watching Mizar after Mizar from a distance, and it had been easy to pick out all the threads of continuity, all the little Mabel things in each incarnation, and forget that they were all themselves. Forget that his sister, his twin, had passed so long ago that there was no one alive who even knew anyone who’d known her.

Forget that she was gone, she was really gone, and she was never, _ever,_ coming back.

This was why he’d stepped back from being part of the Mizars’ lives. He’d managed to forget, watching from his immortal, near-omniscient vantage point, seeing only the continuity of souls and not the individual lives those souls tried on, just how much it could hurt to lose someone. He’d managed to forget that you _could_ lose someone. It was just another little piece of his humanity that had eroded when he wasn’t paying attention, just another little brick falling from the crumbling wall of the self he remembered.

The self that Mabel had believed in.

When the summons from Mira came, Dipper almost let it go to the answering machine as well, before he realised who it was coming from. She was using the modified spell-circle for friends and family (only known to Mira, now, Dipper reflected with a bitter twist of his lips), but she used a full circle so rarely that Dipper almost didn’t recognise it. As soon as he did, though, he jumped on it, following the tug of his link to Mizar, strengthened by blood, will, and incantation, away from the wandering Shack where he’d been moping and into Mira’s apartment.

“Wh-” he started, but before he could finish even a single word, Mira cut him off.

“Please.” Mira’s voice was hoarse, a little choked, and quiet but forceful, like she was trying to hold back some strong emotion. Like, for example, the deep indigo blue that wrapped around her head, punctuated by constant lightning-flickers of sick yellow-green worry.

She looked up at Dipper where he hovered in the centre of the circle she’d hastily drawn on the kitchen floor, her eyes reddened around the edges and her clenched fist shaking as blood dripped from between her fingers onto the linoleum tiles. “Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with this.”

Dipper looked around. The apartment looked undisturbed at first glance, though the doorway and windows had the black-hole radiance of wards against demonic energy, except where a broken sigil glowed at the top of the door. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

Mira gave him a long, searching look, locking eyes with Dipper and holding his gaze for an almost uncomfortable length of time. Finally, she looked away, with a soft exhale, her shoulders slumping. “You really don’t know? You _mean_ it?”

“Yes,” Dipper said carefully, watching Mira’s face as relief and hope warred with the worry that underlined her eyes. When she didn’t speak, Dipper asked, gently, “Mira, what’s -”

“Ian’s missing.”

The words fell, leaden, into a sudden and absolute silence.

Dipper was the first to break it. “You think _I_ -“

Mira didn’t look at him. “I don’t know what to think.”

Dipper drew in a long breath that he didn’t technically need, letting it out in a slow exhale. “I didn’t lay a finger on him.” The words snapped out, sharper than intended, and he felt a twinge of guilt when Mira flinched. “You really think I -”

“What else was I going to think? The first time you met him you tried to kill him! And you’ve -” The fury drained out of Mira’s voice, and she met Dipper’s gaze again as she said softly, “I’ve seen what you do when you’re angry.”

Dipper opened his mouth to protest, but something else caught his attention. He’d been so focused on Mira, on her distress - and then her accusations - that he’d barely noticed that they weren’t alone. That there was another, unpleasantly familiar presence in the room.

Dipper turned on Rosa, mindful as he did of Mira’s words, and of the truth of them. He didn’t let darkness wash over him, didn’t let blue flame erupt all along his arms. He _might_ have let a little extra reverb enter his voice, though, and _maybe_ he let it go a little deeper, just for effect, when he said, “ _Y͞҉o̸͢u_.̵“

The apartment floor quivered. Rosa, to her credit, didn’t. Instead, she drew in a quick, sharp breath and glanced over at Mira, who was glaring daggers at Dipper. “What about me, demon?”

Dipper quirked an eyebrow at that. “You’re Ian’s friend, aren’t you?”

“How d- yes,” Rosa said, recovering herself quickly. “Yes, I am.” She placed her hands firmly on her hips and jutted out her surprisingly sharp chin, as though daring Dipper to make something of it.

“Wow. If he’s missing, then you must be worried sick about him,” Dipper said, with a grin that even he knew was nasty. A closer look, though, told him he’d been at least slightly wrong. She was worried, downright scared, and the generous helping of guilt alongside it made Dipper suspect it wasn’t entirely a fear of getting caught.

“I am,” Rosa repeated, this time more defensive than defiant.

“Alcor, what are you doing?” Mira interrupted, her voice thankfully more exasperated than angry, though she sounded like she was nearing her last nerve.

“Just getting to know your new friend! We’ve never been introduced,” Dipper said, turning to face Rosa again and tipping his top hat with a low, borderline mocking bow. “Nice to meet you. I’m Alcor the Dreambender, the Twin Star, the Forgotten One, Lord of the Dreamscape and Master of the Mind, Shepherd of the Flock, Devourer of S̸͝ǫ̛͠u͏̧͜ĺ́s͏ -“

“Your reputation precedes ya,” Rosa snapped, and Dipper let his eyes flash gold.

“What a coincidence! So does yours.” He grinned as wide as he could, putting all his jagged teeth on display. “Let’s compare and see w͟h̵o͜s̕e is ̀w͠or͝sè.”

“Okay, _enough_.” Dipper turned to see Mira with her arms crossed, a flat and decidedly unimpressed look on her face, her toe tapping against the floor. “Are you just going to float around antagonizing my friends, or are you actually planning to help? Because if it’s the former, then get out. I don’t need you.”

Dipper swallowed the bitterness that welled up in the back of his throat. “Oh, well, in _that_ case -”

“She doesn’t mean it, we’ve done everythin’ we can think of,” Rosa interrupted. Both of Dipper’s eyebrows shot towards his hairline at her boldness, but he didn’t say anything. “You’re also supposed to be all-knowin’. So spill. What happened to Ian?”

Dipper eyed the thick cloud of gray-green guilt mingled with sharp, bright lightning-flares of fear that boiled around her head, and smiled. “You’re right. I can tell you that.” When Rosa’s face lit up, a rosy-gold streak of hope appearing in the mire of her aura, he held up a hand. “Hey, but I don’t work for free.”

“Oh, for -” Mira started, taking a step forward, clearly at the end of her patience, but Rosa just glared up at Dipper.

“What do you want, demon?”

‘I want you to tell the truth’ flooded to the front of Dipper’s mind, but stuck on his tongue. She’d give herself away, given enough time and pressure. Let her dig her own grave. It’d be that much more satisfying when she fell headfirst into it. And Mira wouldn’t be able to blame him.

Another option, another thought, slithered through his head, leaving a poisonous trail. He could ask Mira to talk to him again, to hear him out, to consider his side of things. To forgive him. 

She’d do it. Dipper didn’t have any doubt about that, not after the way she’d chosen Ian over him again and again. It would almost serve her right, to be forced to stay with him if she ever wanted to see Ian again -

\- aaannnnd that was exactly the kind of thinking that had put him in this situation in the first place. Dipper gave himself a shake, shooting Rosa another hopefully unnerving grin. "Not so fast! I can’t do a full replay without getting something in exchange...but I can show you the highlight reel.”

“Then _do_ it!”

Mira’s outburst dragged both Dipper’s and Rosa’s attention back to her. Her arms were still crossed, her posture still puffed up with defiance and anger, but her eyes were bright and her voice cracked slightly towards the end of the sentence. She raised both hands to gesture wildly as she started to shout, before letting them drop uselessly to her sides. “Are you _enjoying_ this? Is that what this is about? Someone I _love_ -”

She choked, and glared at the ground, balling both hands into fists as she visibly fought to bring herself back under control. The cloud of guilt around Rosa was almost tangible, now, but it didn’t fill Dipper with the satisfied schadenfreude he’d been expecting. Mira’s words were hollowing out his chest. “Someone I care about very much is, is, could be in a lot of trouble right now and I know how dangerous it is to get close to me and we don’t have a lot of time and, and you could help but you’re just _toying_ with us and, and, and I _trusted_ you -”

Every sob was like having a grappling hook lodge itself somewhere in his spine and retract, tearing a bloody chunk out of him when it went. Dipper couldn’t do much more than hover, stunned. It had been easy to overlook when Mira had just gotten mad, just yelled and thrown him out. It had been easy to think she was being unreasonable, she was being irrational, she just didn’t understand...

She understood. She understood, Dipper thought, better than he had. Here he was playing on Mira and Rosa’s reactions like it was some sort of mildly amusing game, and the only time it had crossed his mind how much this meant to them was when he was thinking about how he could use Mira’s feelings to make her play nice.

Just the thought made him feel sick, even in a constructed body that he’d never really bothered to give internal organs.

“Okay,” Dipper said, and realised his own voice was a little shaky too. “Okay, I -” Part of him wished he could vanish into the mindscape again, curl up and lick his wounds and wish Mabel would come along and plop a sweater over his head to make him stop moping, but he shut that part up. Mabel was gone, and she wasn’t coming back, but right now, his best friend in the world needed him to put aside his existential crisis and help her. 

“I can’t do sound,” he said, blinking open the third eye on his forehead. “And I won’t be able to keep it running for long -”

“I don’t care.” Mira’s voice was tight and choked. “Just tell us what happened and where he is now.”

Dipper glanced around the apartment and settled on the kitchen, where the agitation was worst. A flickering beam from his third eye projected the scene, eerily silent and translucent, as the three strangers in dark suits entered the room, surrounding Ian.

Mira made a sharp, surprised noise when the bald man with the enormous moustache and matching eyebrows drew out a government ID, and Rosa, who was already so white she almost looked like a ghost, blanched even further, looking like she was a few seconds from losing consciousness. She reached out and took Mira’s hand, and held it, through the tense, silent conversation that followed, right up until Ian lunged for the table and one of the men slapped - Dipper blinked, and the image glitched - what looked like a binding seal against Ian’s shoulder.

Both girls gasped as the image of Ian fell, another agent expertly and efficiently cuffing his apparently unconscious body, and Mira let out a low moan, sinking down to the floor like she’d just had her knees cut out from under her. Dipper felt a twinge of guilt as he turned away from them to focus on the papers that Ian had knocked to the floor, following their patterns as they scattered around the kitchen. But then again, there wasn’t much he could do now that would actually help, other than finding Ian.

And that was starting to look like it was going to be a challenge even for the almighty Alcor the Dreambender. Arcane Division had Ian, and they were no slouches in the magitech department. Getting past their wards wasn’t impossible, far from it, but it’d take time. Time that they didn’t have.

And there was something about this whole thing that Dipper didn’t like. Arcane Division agents knew enough not to use binding seals on nonmagical beings. The seals were practically useless against anything that didn’t have its own innate magic that the seal could draw from to power itself and bind that magic. So the fact that they’d even bothered...

At best, it meant that they were dumber than Dipper had estimated, or they’d decided to cover all their bases by slapping Ian with a seal just in case he did have some kind of powers they didn’t know about. At worst...

At worst it meant that they knew something Dipper didn’t.

Dipper didn’t _like_ other people knowing things he didn’t. It itched, like a one-sided deal or a nagging toothache, but also - he was supposed to be all-knowing, all-powerful. If he wasn’t that guy, then - well, what was he?

Dipper snapped his fingers, and the image of the past dissolved. Rosa didn’t move, and Dipper estimated that she was about one good shock away from her fear for her friend overcoming her selfish guilt. Mira didn’t get up from the floor, but she did say, in a voice that was too flat, “What did they do with him.”

Dipper concentrated, briefly, his attention still mostly on the papers that had flown off the table and where they’d gone. “Gathered up their stuff, started to clean up, then two of them tried to carry Ian out the door and set off all the wards.” He frowned. That couldn’t be right. “They weren’t expecting the wards. They - they knew you two didn’t ward the place.”

“Stars and leylines, they were _watching_ us?”

Dipper winced as he nodded. “They left in a hurry, they were afraid you might have the wards tied to a security system, that somebody might catch them here on camera. They broke that one -” he pointed to the amber glow over the door - “on the way out. They must really not have wanted anyone to know they were here.”

Mira swallowed, hard, letting out a shaky breath. “They want him to disappear.”

“It looks like it,” Dipper said, as gently as he could. “But lucky for us, they got spooked - and left a few things behind.”

He snapped his fingers again, and the Bill Cipher page flew from its hiding place under the fridge, where it had slid in the brief struggle. It hovered in midair, slowly rotating, suspended in a sphere of filigree-fine bars of golden light.

Dipper gestured, and the sphere sank down towards Mira. She reached up and through it, bursting it, and the page sank gently into her hands. Mira looked at it, then up at Dipper, confusion overwriting the worry that sunk into her features. “What -”

Rosa looked down over Mira’s shoulder at the page. She couldn’t have read more than a line or two before she shut her eyes, clasping both hands in front of her face and breathing heavily into the space between her palms. “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” she mumbled, her voice muffled by her hands.

“What is this?” Mira asked, scanning the page.

“A clue,” said Dipper, just as Rosa said, her voice hushed with horror, “A demon.”

Mira frowned. “What?”

“A demon! That’s - that’s Bill Cipher! That’s -” Rosa clapped both hands to her temples, then seemed to realise that her anguished gesture was flattening her artfully tousled fauxhawk and quickly yanked her hands away. “That’s the demon that caused the Transcendence tryin’ to bring about the end of the world.”

The look Mira shot at Dipper was piercing, and he knew that all the pieces were falling together behind it.

“That tried to destroy everything?” she asked, softly, with the patient but irresistible force of flowing water.

Dipper looked quickly away.

Mira nodded thoughtfully, as though he’d just confirmed some suspicion of hers. “Right,” she said, pushing herself up off the floor. “Let’s go get Ian back.”

“No! You don’t understand! Ian’s last incarnation was workin’ with Cipher!” Rosa pointed at Dipper. “ _His_ mortal enemy!”

Dipper grinned lazily at her. “We’ve...settled our differences.”

“Settled your - I thought he was dead!”

Dipper only grinned wider. It was Mira who said, “He was.”

“B-” Rosa started, looking from one to the other, slowly starting to shake her head as she took a step backwards. “Ohhh no, no, ya don’t mean -”

She glanced over her shoulder, towards the door, and the amber glow of the broken ward directly over it. When she turned back to face Mira and Dipper, she seemed deflated, somehow, slightly smaller and less expansive than usual. Even her hair seemed smaller, and her voice had lost some of her usual unwavering self-confidence when she said, softly, “Not Ian?”

Mira grimaced at Dipper. Rosa, abruptly, sat down on the floor, her skirt and layers of petticoats poofing out around her.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” she said, with feeling, and buried her face in her hands.

“Do they know?” Mira asked Dipper, who concentrated for a moment before he nodded.

“That’s why they were watching in the first place.”

Mira nodded, biting at her bottom lip as she looked around. “They’re never going to let him go.” It wasn’t a question.

“Governments tend to play for keeps,” Dipper agreed.

“All right.” Mira took a deep breath in, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders so that she seemed somehow taller than her slight five feet, two inches. “I’ll get my bat.”

When Dipper didn’t say anything, she gave him a long look that, if Dipper had to describe it, he would say was probably like being on the receiving end of one of his own soul-searching stares. “I’m going to rescue him,” she said, with absolute conviction, and Dipper didn’t doubt it for an instant. “I’d like your help, but I’ll go without you if I have to.”

“What? Are you serious? They’d wipe you out before you even made it to the door,” Dipper said, and Mira crossed her arms.

“Excuse me? Who’s been your Mizar and cult-bashing partner for the last…” She stopped, turning her eyes up towards the ceiling and counting under her breath.

“That’s different! Governments have got way more firepower than cults. And they’re actually organized!”

“Not from the stories you’ve told me. And more firepower? Are you forgetting about that time when the Zucchini-Eaters of Almighty Yog-Sho’thur -”

“That was different, most of the time we get there before they can actually summon whatever they’re -”

“It doesn’t matter! I handled most of that on my own and I was just _fine_!” Mira stamped one bare foot against the floor, her angry glare less than a foot away from Dipper’s face. “And I can do this on my own too if I have to!”

“You won’t.”

Both Dipper and Mira turned to face Rosa. She was still sitting on the floor with her legs stuck straight out in front of her, looking like a doll with her combat boots peeking out from under her petticoats, but she’d dropped her hands into her lap and the look on her face was pure determination as she turned to face them. “Have to, that is. I’m comin’ with you.”

Mira and Dipper looked at each other.

“There are a million reasons why that wouldn’t work,” Dipper said. “…exactly a million, actually.”

The scowl that crossed Rosa’s face was pure poison. She pushed herself to her feet, cocking her head to one side as she said, “Name five.”

“Well, one, you’re a pop star -”

“Ex _cuse_ me?”

“- two, you’ve never done anything like this before, so you’d actually be more of a liability than an asset, three, you’re really easily recognizable, four -”

“Why do you want to help us?” Mira asked Rosa, cutting Dipper’s litany short.

“You mean ‘break the law and put your life and your career in danger’,” Dipper interjected helpfully, and Mira elbowed him hard in the side.

Rosa shrugged, looking quickly away. “Ian’s my best friend. We – we made a blood pact. Seventh grade. We got each other’s backs.” Her voice went quiet when she said, “He’d do the same for me.”

Dipper tried not to let the glow of smug satisfaction that filled him show on his face. He wasn’t sure how well it worked.

Mira took two hurried steps over to Rosa, grabbing her by one shoulder and pulling her into a hug. Rosa barely had time to look startled before Mira let her go again, taking a half-step back but not letting go of her shoulder. “I know,” she said, with a rueful smile. “But as much as I hate to admit it, this time Alcor’s right.”

Dipper beamed - literally - and bobbed upwards a few inches in the air.

“ _This time_ ,” Mira said, with a pointed look over her shoulder at Dipper. “Jury’s still out on all the rest. Right now, the best thing you can do for Ian is keep yourself safe and be ready to cheer him up when we get him home.” She gave Rosa a wide, unconvincing smile, and Rosa jerked away from the comforting hand Mira had rested on her shoulder.

“You don’t get it, do ya? I _have_ to help! I have to get him outta this mess!”

Mira shook her head. “Wh-”

“Because it’s my fault he’s in it in the first place!”

No one moved. The silence seemed to buzz, as though it was already echoing with the words that were about to be said - or shouted.

Mira was the first to break it. “That’s not - you were trying to help when you paid for those tests. It’s not your fault that the government got interested in Ian’s results -”

“That’s not what I mean!” Rosa jabbed an angry finger in Dipper’s direction, and he pressed a clawed hand to his chest, feigning surprise. “Ask _him_ , he’s been smirkin’ at me since he got here. I _know_ ya know what I’m talkin’ about!”

“What do you mean?” Mira asked warily. She was giving Dipper a look that was half shock, half resignation. “Is there something else you’re not telling me?”

“I -” Dipper started, then pointed indignantly back at Rosa. “It’s her confession to make, not mine! I wasn’t even sure until I got here! And if it wasn’t true, I didn’t want to get in between you and another person you cared about because of something that happened before any of you were even born,” he mumbled, to the polished gold tips of his shiny leather shoes.

He didn’t look up, but Dipper could feel Mira’s eyes lingering on him through the interminable silence that followed. He only just managed to stifle a sigh of relief when she turned away.

“What did you do?” Mira asked, and Dipper nearly swallowed his tongue. That was her Mizar voice, that was the one she used on cultists when there was a summons to stop and a sacrifice bleeding out on the edge of a circle.

Rosa, already boiling with guilt and terror and several nasty shocks, looked blindsided at the appearance of Mira’s steely side. “I -” she started, taking a step back. “I don’t -”

“ _Tell me,_ ” Mira demanded, stepping forward, and Rosa raised both hands, flinching away as if from an imaginary blow.

“I tried to set things up so you’d find out something awful about Ian and break up with him so I could date you instead!”

There was a beat.

“That’s it?” Mira asked, carefully.

“Wh- _that’s it_?”

Mira gestured with one arm around the kitchen. “You didn’t mean for any of this to -”

“No! God, no!” Rosa bit her bottom lip, glancing back over at the kitchen table. “I never thought it would go this far, I just wanted you ta think he was inclined to demon worship and -”

“My _best friend_ is a demon,” Mira said flatly.

Rosa looked up at her with an expression of complete astonishment. “I honestly can’t believe that never crossed my mind.” She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, looking down and slightly to her right as she avoided Mira’s stare. “You’re not mad?”

“Right now? No. Right now I’m just relieved that you’re not, I don’t know, the reincarnation of the demon huntress Wenda out to slaughter both my best friend and my boyfriend in front of my eyes.” Mira swallowed, looking all around her as she bit her bottom lip. “Trust me, as soon as Ian’s safe, I’m going to be fucking furious. I’m not too happy about being used and deceived by somebody I thought was my friend. But for now...” She gave a single nod, and turned on her heel. “I’m going to get my bat.”

She stalked down the hallway and into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Rosa and Dipper both watched her go, Rosa wincing at the door slam.

“I really fucked up,” Rosa said, after a moment of silence.

“You did,” Dipper agreed.

They didn’t say anything more to each other until Mira came back out of the bedroom, bat slung over one shoulder, her long hair tied up in two round buns on either side of her head, a mask with double air filters covering her lower face and plastic guards wrapped around her shins, her knees, and her elbows. Paired with her clothing, she looked a little like she’d been preparing for a roller derby when someone had dumped a bucket of half-melted rainbow ice cream over her.

“Well?” she said, as Rosa tried valiantly not to stare. “We going?”

Dipper nodded, reaching down to take her hand. He concentrated briefly, looking for the little flicker of energy that was _Ian_ , ready to blip them instantly to wherever he was -

\- and couldn’t find it.


	9. Chapter 9

It was too quiet.

Ian wasn’t sure how long he’d been alone, with nothing but the constant low buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead and the white noise in his own head, and the quickly-growing awareness of his own mortality. Usually just sharp, bitter static at the back of his mind, it had been dragged to the forefront of his thoughts by the narrow walls closing him in, and the unclear but inevitable fact of what they might mean.

_You only get so much time._

He wasn’t sure where he’d woken up, or how much time had passed (though the period of unconsciousness, not to mention the total lack of windows or clocks or other distinguishing features in the small, white cell of a room he’d found himself in, didn’t help much with that). The only thing he was really sure of, with a cold certainty that swept through him without warning at unpredictable times, was that he was in deep, _deep_ trouble, with no way out.

He’d panicked twice already, once when he’d woken up and found himself locked in, and once when it had finally sunk in just what it meant that he’d been brought here. The sheer inescapability of his situation and every possible awful future that it could lead to had overwhelmed him, and though he’d managed to claw his way back to a point where he could call himself okay, it was a fragile kind of okay.

He was slowly losing it, and he knew it. Whatever tentative grip he’d had on reality, whatever coping strategies he’d had to bandage over the gaping black hole that was the inside of his head, it was all slipping away in the face of the inescapable reality. Just like last time, except that now he knew why. Now there was an explanation for the feeling of everything sliding out from under him, of forces beyond his control dragging him around like a marionette. There was a reason behind the overwhelming certainty that there was something _wrong_ underneath his skin.

There _was_ something wrong underneath his skin. Or, rather, in it. And it was him.

_“It’s not every day that the reincarnation of Bill Cipher falls into your lap.”_

But even finally knowing what this was, what was happening in his brain, wasn’t doing Ian any good. He could still feel the old wounds pulling open, and this time, the white-walled institution that had locked him away wasn’t going to help tie them closed. He could feel it as surely as he could feel something coming, something huge and inevitable and unbearably close, an irresistible wave about to wash away the last grasping fingerholds of control and certainty he had in the vast, ever-shifting chaos of an uncaring universe. He’d managed, with help (and a _lot_ of therapy), to dam it up and hold it at bay since the last time he’d felt this way, but this time, there was no help. And it was going to sweep away any support he might have left.

Last time, it had almost been his death.

In other words, he was still on the verge of plummeting straight into another attack, and he knew it. But he couldn’t let that happen. He had to keep a clear head, if he was going to have any hope of getting out of here intact.

There had to be a way out. There had to be some sort of flaw - in the lock, in the room, or if all else failed, in the people who’d put him here.

There always was.

...

“What do you _mean_ , you can’t find him?!”

Dipper balled both hands into fists, tugging at his hair and knocking his floating top hat askew. “I mean I can’t find him! Do you think -” He bit off his sentence before he could finish it with _I’m not looking_. He already knew that that was exactly what Mira thought. “I’m doing everything I can think of. Either he’s behind some seriously heavy wards, or -”

Mira looked, for a moment, like she was about to throw up. Dipper hastily backtracked. “But if something had happened to him, then I’d be able to find his soul, and I can’t. So at least we know he’s still alive.”

“Reassurin’,” Rosa said, arching a brow sarcastically.

Dipper scowled at her, and the tips of her hair caught fire.

While Rosa was racing down the hall frantically patting out the blue flames on her head, Dipper turned back to Mira. “Seriously, I’ve tried everything I can think of, and I’m not even getting a flicker.”

Mira blew out a long breath. “Is there anything I can do to help? I think I’ve got some of those chocolate-covered peanuts in the back of the cupboard -”

“Chocolate-covered peanuts aren’t going to cut it,” Dipper apologised. “Have you got a large animal or small fortune handy?”

“So, no deal, then,” Mira sighed. She pressed a hand to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut. “There – there has to be something I can do, something – What if you -”

“Won’t work,” Dipper said, and Mira threw her bat down with a ringing clang.

“At least I’m actually trying to help!”

Silence stretched out between them like a piano string, drawn tight and reverberating and ready to snap.

Dipper backed down first. “There’s one more thing I _could_ try,” he admitted, reluctantly.

The words had barely left his mouth when Mira said, “Then _do it_.”

Dipper concentrated. They could completely shield a human whose soul he didn’t own from even his near-omniscience, with a warding system as thorough as those on the government buildings he’d idly examined on days when he was bored and solving centuries-old puzzles had lost its appeal. But Dipper had never yet seen the warding system that could completely suppress a demonic essence.

At least, not one as familiar (and, even confined to a human form, as powerful) as the one Dipper shared with one other soul.

And sure enough, this time, when Dipper let himself sink into the supernova of knowledge that was always lingering just in the back of his mind, something brilliant and unearthly blue flickered momentarily at the edge of his senses. As soon as Dipper tried to latch onto it, though, to follow it to its source, it vanished. He tried again, and then again, narrowing the net he cast every time, but the frustrating flickers of blue flame still eluded him.

“What’s the matter? Is it not working?” Mira asked, and Dipper snapped abruptly back to what she and a few million other humans laughably called ‘reality’.

“What? Why would you think that? I can do this, I’m not -”

Mira pointed wordlessly at the fridge, or rather, where the fridge had been. Instead, a small, crumpled ball of metal sat forlornly beside the counter, as though it had been balled up and squeezed in a giant hand.

“Oops,” Dipper muttered, sinking down towards the floor.

There was a huff from down the hall, and Rosa emerged from the bathroom, nervously patting at her repaired coif. She met Dipper’s eyes, and gave him a challenging look. He returned it with a nasty smile, though his heart wasn’t really in it, and let a little blue flame play across his gloved fingers.

“I could make a few calls,” Rosa said, shooting Dipper a glare before turning towards Mira, eyes wide and hopeful. For a moment, Dipper almost felt sorry for her. She was going to have to come up with a lot more, better apologies than that if she wanted to get back on Mira’s good side. “Work in this industry long enough and ya make some valuable connections.”

Dipper bit back a snarky comment about the relative usefulness of music producers against government-issued magical weaponry.

“And not a word from you, ya hairspray-hatin’ arsonist,” Rosa snapped in Dipper’s direction, even though he hadn’t actually said anything. 

Dipper narrowed his eyes. “I’ll set more than just your stupid-looking hairdo on fire.”

Rosa crossed her arms and gave Dipper a once-over, looking unimpressed as her gaze swept from his toes to the tip of his top hat. “Strong words comin’ from a bein’ that could manifest as anythin’ he damn well pleases but chooses a nervous, sweaty, jumped-up kid -”

Dipper bared his teeth - both rows - and hissed at her. She started backwards, and he settled back in thin air, content that she’d been properly reminded just why she should show a little more respect.

He really wasn’t expecting her to lean forward and hiss back.

Dipper’s wings flared, without his even having to think about it, expanding his presence to fill the room and remind his opponent how puny she was, how mortal -

“Would both of you _cut it out_!”

Both Rosa and Dipper glanced over to Mira, who had gone white with anger. Dipper didn’t need to feel the flicker in Rosa’s aura to know that she was having exactly the same realisation that he was - namely, that they’d pushed Mira’s patience beyond her limit.

“You’re acting like a couple of children and we don’t have _time_ for this,” Mira snapped. “Rosa, you said you knew some people you could call?”

Rosa nodded, opening her mouth to speak, and Mira held up a hand. “Save it. Go make your calls and don’t talk to me again unless you have information.”

“I can do that from here -” Rosa started, but quailed when Mira hefted her bat. “Ya know what, I think I might just head back to the studio offices.”

“You should do that,” Mira agreed flatly. 

She followed Rosa down the hall and into the entryway, waiting at the door as Rosa stepped out. Rosa paused in the doorway, looking back at Mira, and the contrition in her face was almost enough to make Dipper waver. “I’m - I’m so sorry. If I’d known any of this was goin’ to happen -”

“That’s the only reason you wouldn’t’ve done it?” Mira interrupted. “That’s all you want to take back?”

“I -”

“Just find my boyfriend.” Mira stepped forward and shut the door in Rosa’s face.

Dipper wiped the grin off of his own face seconds before she turned around, but he must not have been fast enough, because Mira just looked at him, a disappointed frown settling onto her face. “Don’t act like you're so innocent. I _know_ you knew more about this than you let on.”

“I really didn’t!” Dipper protested.

“Oh yeah? Does ‘It’s her confession, not mine’ ring a bell?”

“Look, I really didn’t know! I just found out a few days ago and I -”

Dipper stopped. Mira raised an eyebrow, but she waited, with her arms crossed, for him to start speaking again.

“I wanted to tell you I thought something was going on,” Dipper admitted, finally, staring down at the dirty rug and the piles of cute pastel shoes in the closet.

The frown that crossed Mira’s face looked, thankfully, more confused than angry. “Then why didn’t you?”

“Because -"

He was interrupted by a quick, sharp rap on the door, and the sound of Sun-mi’s voice from the other side. “Mira? Are you alone?”

“ _Hide_ ,” Mira hissed at Dipper, and Dipper blipped back out of corporeality, blowing out a frustrated breath that peeled the paint up off the doorframe. No sooner had he retreated back onto a plane of existence invisible to human eyes, than Mira pulled open the door and Sun-mi hurried inside, pushing the door shut behind her and activating the peephole screen to peer worriedly at it.

“What’s going on?” Mira asked, and Sun-mi turned back to face her. Despite the cloud of worry that hovered over her and the way she kept glancing over her shoulder, an excited grin split her face as she thrust a brown-paper-wrapped package into Mira’s arms.

“I don’t have much time,” she said, as Mira scrambled not to drop the package. “I’ve already been here way too long waiting for Rosa Darling to leave, if somebody followed me here then they could be waiting for me outside -”

“Waiting for you?” Mira echoed, her voice heavy with disbelief. Sun-mi turned away from the peephole screen to flash her a wide, delighted smile. “Just what’s going on here?”

Sun-mi shot one last glance at the screen, before turning back to look Mira in the eye. “Remember that huge story I mentioned I was working on a while back? The one that could get me into a lot of trouble if anyone knew I was digging?”

“What did you get yourself into?” Mira asked, sounding horrified, and Sun-mi laughed, before glancing back at the door again.

“Hey, you have to take some of the credit! If you hadn’t introduced me to Rosa Darling, I’d never have got the lead that let me crack this wide open.” She reached down and locked the door behind her, before seeming to really look at Mira for the first time. “Nice...outfit?”

“Thanks? What are you talking about? What about Rosa? Why did you have to wait for her to leave if -”

“I need your help,” Sun-mi interrupted. “You’ve got the biggest social media presence of anyone I know, and this needs to be seen by as many people as possible as soon as possible if we’re going to have any chance of righting a terrible injustice.”

Mira opened her mouth, but before she could say a word, Sun-mi added, “And it might just be your best shot at getting your boyfriend back.”

...

The door opened for the first time when Ian had his back to it, scouring the whitewashed wall for any sign of weakness, any hollow places that might yield under a heavy blow. All he’d found were a set of initials etched just above the metal bedframe, PH and a series of tally marks scratched into the thin layer of white overlaid on top of cinderblock with what looked like it must have been a safety pin. 

There were significantly more tallies than Ian wanted to think about.

He was focusing all his attention on the faint echo he thought he’d heard when he tapped one of the bricks when there was a loud buzz and the door swung open with a heavy, metallic clunking behind him. Ian nearly bashed his head against the wall as he jumped up, spinning around in hopes he could at least catch a glimpse of the mechanism that worked the door. He was just in time to see it swing shut with a resounding clang, leaving two men in pale blue scrubs, the younger of the two pushing a cart full of medical equipment, alone in the room with Ian.

“Are you here to admit me?” Ian asked, with a levity he didn’t feel. “Gonna take my shoelaces?”

One of the men - nurse, Ian decided, definitely not a doctor - just gave him a quick glance before pulling a device that Ian barely recognised as a medical scanner from the jumble on the cart and powering it up, visibly counting under his breath as the screen came to glowing life with a quiet whine. The younger - an orderly, Ian decided, and not much older than he was - was watching Ian with a look that Ian imagined he also gave unfamiliar dogs that might at any minute decide to bite. He didn’t say a word, didn’t meet Ian’s eyes, just looked quickly away when Ian stared back.

At least, Ian decided, as the scanner booted up, so far, neither of them had started talking about him like he wasn’t there.

“Is that the ViTech 3.12?” Ian asked, nodding towards the scanner as the man he’d pegged as the nurse held it up over his heart, frowning at the screen. “Is it any more reliable than the 3.10? They used to have to take my pulse manually every time. Ms. Concepcion thought it was something to do with electromagnetic -”

“Stop talking,” the nurse said, abruptly. Ian swallowed the rest of his sentence, pressing his lips together and giving him a wide smile. 

After he’d hit the device a few times with the flat of his hand, the nurse growled at it and turned to toss it onto the cart. “Find me the thermometer,” he said, shortly, to the orderly, barely even looking in Ian’s direction as he grabbed Ian’s arm and pressed two fingers against the inside of his wrist.

Ian sucked in a breath and held it, focusing on the way his lungs started to burn and not on the hand around his wrist, a not-so-subtle reminder that he was stuck here, that he was at the mercy of whatever these people wanted to do to him. This close, the smells of disinfectant and latex that hovered around the nurse taking his pulse, the familiar beeps and whirs of the various instruments on the cart as the orderly rummaged around, the rough handling like he was just a nuisance getting in the way of the simple job of taking vitals, was all summoning up a flood of memories Ian had thought he’d happily repressed. Loud voices dismissively discussing patients when they thought they were alone, the squeak of rubber soles against polished white floors, someone screaming down the hall while the television spewed hatefully bright, fast, loud animated nonsense into a common room where he was the only one who bothered watching, thinking _I could do this better_ -

“Heart rate 70,” the nurse barked out, and the orderly nodded, leaning over to sneak a glimpse at Ian and then ducking back behind the nurse. “Got that thermometer ready?”

The rest of the checkup flew by in much the same way, the nurse treating Ian like little more than a very realistic training dummy, the orderly gawking like Ian was on exhibit at a zoo whenever he thought Ian wasn’t looking. Ian tried, with varying success, to tamp down the irritation, the rising anger and the fear that boiled just under it. Exploding had never worked at the institution, and it wouldn’t get him anywhere here. 

So he smiled, and watched, and waited.

It wasn’t until the checkup was complete and the nurse and orderly were turning to leave that Ian saw an opening. The nurse was staring fixedly up at the top of the doorframe as he waited for the door to swing open, at what Ian surmised must be a hidden camera. He didn’t notice when Ian reached out and tapped the orderly’s wrist.

The orderly jumped, looking quickly from Ian, to the nurse, then back to Ian. Ian held a finger to his lips for quiet, glancing at the nurse to make sure his attention was directed elsewhere before he leaned forward and asked softly, “Do you know why I’m here? What they’re planning?”

The orderly gave Ian a wide-eyed look, half wonder, half terror. “They said not to talk to you,” he whispered, as the grating buzz that signalled the door opening filled the room.

“What?” Ian whispered back, as soon as the buzz died down, under the sound of the door swinging ponderously open. “Why not?”

The nurse turned back, glancing disinterestedly at the orderly. “Coming?”

The orderly shot him a nervous grin, and grabbed the handle of the cart. He started to wheel it forward, with an apologetic look back at Ian.

Ian just barely caught the last words the orderly said over his shoulder, as both he and his cart rattled out of the room.

“They said you’d try to get into my head.”

Then the only other two people Ian had seen since he’d been sealed into this cell walked away, and the door swung slowly, heavily, inevitably, shut in his face.

...

Mira couldn’t speak, could barely think, for a few silent seconds. It felt like a lifetime before she was able to choke out, “You know about Ian? _You know how to get him back?_ ”

“Sort of.” Sun-mi took one last look at the peephole screen, and, apparently satisfied with what she saw, took the package back from Mira, cradling it like it was something precious. “Remember Paloma Heart?”

Mira swallowed the shout that no, she did not remember Paloma Heart, and she didn’t particularly care right now. If Sun-mi knew something about where Ian had been taken or how to get him back, she’d sit through a thousand lectures about a stranger (whose name, now that she thought about it, was vaguely familiar) if it led to getting him back. “I don’t.”

Sun-mi scurried across the living room to stand beside the window, peering out between the blinds at the apartment building across the alley. “Paloma Heart went missing in 3008. There were no leads. Her family thought she was abducted, but the police treated it as a voluntary disappearance. When her body turned up in a wrecked car in Nevada this year, they closed the case.” She turned to look back into the room, and stopped mid-sentence. “But - what is _that_?”

“A puppet theatre,” Mira answered, sitting down on the couch. Her knees were starting to feel unusually watery.

“Sit down on the floor, your head’ll be silhouetted against the blinds and you’ll make an easy target,” Sun-mi said, as she herself settled cross-legged on the fake hardwood of the floor and carefully placed the package in the centre of the coffee table. “Why do you have a puppet theatre?”

“Long story,” Mira answered. “I’m guessing Paloma didn’t crash her own car?”

Sun-mi shook her head. “There was no reason for her to be in Nevada - she had no ties there, no family, a private investigator couldn’t turn up any secret friends or lovers there. The family paid for an independent autopsy.”

Despite her worry for Ian, Mira found she was quickly getting caught up in the story Sun-mi was spinning. She could remember, now, hearing the name on the news a few times. Paloma hadn’t been quite as old as Mira herself was now. They’d shown her graduation photo on the evening news when she’d first gone missing. Mira could remember thinking she had a beautiful, kind smile. “And?” she asked, almost dreading the answer.

“She’d been tortured. Physically and magically.”

“So someone _had_ taken her.”

“Yes! But not just anyone.” Sun-mi reached over and tore open the package on the coffee table. Stacks of paper spilled out: police reports, autopsy results, crime scene photos, interviews with the family -

“Preincarnation results?” Mira asked, tugging the sheet of paper in question out from under a pile of transcripts of police interviews.

“Yep. Look at this.” Sun-mi tapped a finger against the paragraph of comments at the bottom of the page. Mira caught the words ‘possibly dryadic in nature’ as she skimmed the dense handwriting. “Her soul had antlers. Wooden ones. And they bore fruit.”

Mira licked her lips, realising how dry her mouth had become. “How did you get all this?”

“I told you I’ve been working on this story for a while.” Sun-mi rifled through the pile of papers in front of her. “Paloma got her results back only days before she vanished. And get a load of this.”

Sun-mi held up a sheet of paper triumphantly. Mira boggled. “Paloma’s official personal file? _How_ did you -”

“A good journalist never reveals her sources,” Sun-mi said, with a small, proud grin. “Let’s just say I have a friend who’s good with code. But look at this. The change log.”

Mira took the sheet from Sun-mi and felt her stomach drop. “They - they reclassified her?”

“Twice. Once just before she vanished, when they set her status to ‘dangerous nonhuman’. And once just before they found her body, setting her back to human so nobody accessing her file to ID her would notice anything wrong.” Sun-mi slapped both palms against the table. “Don’t you see what this means? This goes all the way up! Paloma Heart was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by her own government, and they tried to cover it up!”

Mira couldn’t move. She knew she had to take a breath soon, the swimming darkness at the very edge of her vision told her that much, but she couldn’t make her body obey her. All she could think about was that kind, beautiful smile, and the autopsy reports in front of her, clinical descriptions of the naked body of a woman charred almost beyond recognition and of every cut and burn and curse that had marked her corpse. She’d been young, she’d had so much in front of her, and she’d been murdered and dumped by the people who were supposed to protect her and brushed under the rug by the people who were supposed to bring her justice.

And even though she felt like she’d been stabbed, even through the outrage, Mira couldn’t help a sliver of icy, frantic fear. Just how long, now, had Ian been missing?

“It sounds like you’ve got enough evidence to sue the government for Paloma’s family,” she said, slowly, a terrible thought worming its way into her head. “How does Ian fit into all of this?”

“That’s just it - I don’t have any evidence of what happened to Paloma. Nothing admissible in a court of law, anyway.” Sun-mi glanced up at the window and lowered her voice before she said, “That friend who’s good with code? Can’t testify under oath. All I can legally prove is that someone killed her.”

Mira bit down hard on her lip to keep from screaming.

“I thought that was as far as it was going to go - until Rosa Darling mentioned Ian’s past lives. I only took that job after everything she said because I had a hunch - and it paid off!” Sun-mi’s smile was radiant. “The more digging I did, the more he looked like a likely target. And now I’ve got video evidence that can link the Arcane Division to an abduction -”

“And you let them take him so you could prove it? You wanted justice for a dead girl so badly you’d let a living person go through all the same shit they did to her? Or was it just about proving your own journalist cred?”

Sun-mi started backwards, looking shocked by Mira’s outburst. “What? Where is this coming from? What was I supposed to do, just run up and start fighting a trio of trained secret agents?”

“You knew what was going to happen! You could have at least warned us!”

“No!” Sun-mi protested. “I wasn’t even sure if it was really happening! And if I’d told you anything, and it’d gotten out before I was ready to go to press, before I had any _real_ evidence -”

Her voice went quiet, and she stared down into her hands. “They vanished Paloma, and she and her family were rich - and all citizens. Can you imagine what they’d do to me?”

Despite the bitterness it left on her tongue, Mira had to admit that Sun-mi had a point. “All right, fair. What do we do now?”

Sun-mi nodded, starting to gather up papers. “I want your help writing this up into a coherent story and publicizing it. You link your followers to my article, spread it everywhere you can think of, the story goes viral, they won’t be able to suppress it. And the public pressure will force them to release -”

“We don’t have time,” Mira said. “ _He_ doesn’t have time.” 

Sun-mi looked over, meeting her eyes. Her voice was solemn when she said, “It’s the best chance you’ve got.”

“Maybe not.” Mira looked up, towards the corner of the ceiling where Alcor was still, invisibly, hovering. “Can I see that video?”

...

The next time the door swung open, Ian was watching it.

He’d given up searching the walls for weaknesses, he wasn’t quite sure how long ago. There was only one way in or out of the cell he’d found himself in, and that was the enormous vault door that kept him locked in.

He was sitting on the hard plastic mattress on the low bed, knees apart and elbows resting on them as he leaned forward, hands clasped and dangling in front of him, when the buzzer sounded. Ian nearly jumped, forcing himself to breathe deeply as the door slowly swayed outwards on its massive hinges. This time, though, instead of the nurse and the orderly, Agent Brown stepped up and over the threshold, followed by two burly men Ian didn’t recognise. Brown looked all around the cell before letting his eyes fall on Ian, who met his gaze, but didn’t move.

The door, Ian noticed, with a burst of fear mixed with painful hope, stayed standing open behind them. 

“Come with me, son,” Brown said, holding out a hand. “And don’t even think about trying anything.”

Ian laughed softly to himself, shaking his head. He ignored Brown’s outstretched hand as he asked, half to himself, “Why would you even think I’d be stupid enough to -”

“We’ve been watching you,” Brown said, almost conversationally. “We saw you scouring the place. We caught you talking to that orderly - and we won’t be sending that same boy here again. We know how you work.”

“Oh, you know how I work, huh?” Ian said, wondering if the faint note of sarcasm was about to get him killed. Brown met his eye, the corners of his moustache twitching up in an approximation of a smile.

“Well, we certainly know more about you than you think we do.”

Ian narrowed his eyes at the faint, implied threat. But under the fear, under the shivering, panicked uncertainty of just what the future was bringing speeding towards him, he couldn’t help but feel just the faintest spark of... _excitement_. Somewhere, deep down, some quiet part of him was delighted to be falling into a battle of wits against the resources and intelligence of an entire government.

He didn’t want to name it. But Ian knew, now, exactly what it was. And, judging by the fact that Brown’s moustache twitch had turned into a full-blown, human-looking smile, so did he.

Watching that smile grow, though, sent a jolt of understanding through Ian like a bolt of lightning. Brown really did think that he had Ian figured out, that he knew Ian back to front, just because he knew _Bill Cipher._ He was expecting demonic cleverness, wickedness, slipperiness. He was expecting the mind that had tried to destroy humanity.

He wasn’t expecting Ian Thomas Beale.

Ian drew in a deep breath, silently steeling himself, clutching at that spark of excitement, of _anticipation_ , and fanning it as best he could. Might as well give his audience what they wanted.

He looked up to meet Brown’s eyes, and held the man’s gaze, doing his best not to blink. Ian watched the smile slip slowly from Brown’s face, watched the triumphant contempt in the man’s watery grey eyes slowly fade as the tiniest drop of pure fear bloomed in their depths. Ian kept staring as Brown’s lip curled under his moustache, as his eyes narrowed, as anger rushed in to cover the fear. But the damage was done. The agent had seen what he was expecting to see, and now he was remembering just what the thing he was expecting to see was capable of.

It was _working_. And maybe, just maybe, Ian had found the flaw he’d been looking for.

Ian cocked his head to one side. And then, without taking his eyes from Brown’s, he smiled.

...

Mira left Sun-mi at her computer with a list of her passwords. She hoped Sun-mi’s idea would work, that once the story was out online no one would be able to make it (or the writer who uncovered it) disappear, but she couldn’t afford to wait and find out.

“There’s one major flaw in your plan,” Alcor said, hovering over Mira’s shoulder as she locked the apartment door behind her and activated the protective enchantments built into her Mizar gear. A faint shimmer flowed from her kneepads and wrist guards, spreading to cover her in a nearly-invisible suit of magical armour, as Alcor continued, “We still don’t know where we’re going.”

“Maybe _you_ don’t,” Mira shot back, with a wide, triumphant smile. 

“What? Seriously? I watched the same video you did, how did you get more information from the same twenty seconds of three agents teleporting your unconscious boyfriend out of the back alley?”

“It wasn’t anything in the video.” Mira tapped the end of her bat’s handle, and arcs of crackling purple lightning leapt across its surface. She gave it a practice swing, feeling its comfortable, familiar weight and the slight, hissing resistance from the air with a glow of satisfaction. “It was something Sun-mi said. The video just confirmed it.”

“All right, what’s this mysterious clue you noticed that I - the _near-omniscient demon_ \- missed?” Alcor grumbled, and Mira felt the glow of satisfaction grow stronger. 

“They found Paloma’s body in Nevada. Sun-mi said she didn’t have any reason to be out there.”

“So?” Alcor sounded like he was trying very hard not to pout. Mira did her best not to smile. 

“So the only reason she would’ve been there is if they were keeping her somewhere nearby. Or if they wanted to really cover up where she was and what they were doing to her by putting her body somewhere far away from wherever they were keeping her, and if that’s what they were doing, they would’ve taken the time to crash her somewhere she might’ve actually gone of her own free will.” Mira grinned. “And guess what’s out in the Nevada desert?”

She saw the exact moment the pieces clicked together in Alcor’s head. His totally-not-a-pout froze, melting away into a look of awe as his eyes widened. It was almost hard to remember she was mad at him, Mira had to admit, when he was looking at her like a kid she’d just handed a ticket to Disneyland. “But - but they closed down Edwards Air Force Base over a century ago,” he breathed.

“Or is that just what they want you to think?”

“No, I’ve been there, it’s all abandoned.”

“Above ground,” Mira said.

“But I would’ve been able to tell if -”

“You said yourself that the wards they had up on wherever they’re hiding Ian were good enough that even you couldn’t see through them.”

Alcor gaped at her.

“You’re right,” he said, after a long moment.

“You don’t have to sound so surprised about it!”

Alcor didn’t seem to have heard her. There was a light behind the expression of slightly dazed wonder in his gold eyes. “We’re going to Area 51,” he said quietly, like he couldn’t quite believe it until he heard it out loud.

“We’re going to Area 51,” Mira confirmed, and snapped her mask into place.


	10. Chapter 10

The heat hit Mira like a wall.

She coughed, the mask making it rattle, and, as soon as she’d remembered where all her limbs were and how they worked (being magically and atomically disassembled and popped halfway across the country could leave a girl a little disoriented), fanned herself with the hand that wasn’t holding her bat. “I really don’t know what I expected from the _desert_ ,” she sighed to herself. 

Beside her, and behind her, and above her, Alcor was flicking around like a hummingbird searching for a flower, batwings whirring excitedly. He reached out and plucked a gold-and-black telescope from seemingly thin air, though Mira noticed that a hook that looked suspiciously like it had been yanked from the wrist of a very long-dead pirate was dangling from its middle, and held it to one eye. “I don’t see an entrance anywhere, do you?”

Mira held up a hand to shade her eyes from the relentless sun and peered around at the still, dusty, abandoned complex around them. Buildings stood in various stages of decay around them, behind a chain-link fence that was red with rust and had fallen down in massive sections all around. A battered metal sign still warned against trespassing on US government property. Mira squinted at it.

“There!” Alcor grabbed her shoulder, spinning her slightly to point her towards a wreck of a building that looked identical to all of the others. The roof appeared to have caved in, taking half of a cinderblock wall with it, and sand was piled in the corners she could see inside.

“I don’t -”

There was a _clonk_ and the sand pile in one corner of the ruined building suddenly turned huge in one eye. Mira tried to push away the telescope that Alcor had pressed against her face, but he pushed it right back, insisting, “No, _look_.”

Mira looked. There was, if she looked very closely, a shadow along the base of the pile of sand. She could see nothing to cast it.

“It’s an illusion,” Alcor said, sounding far too proud of himself. “A hologram. A surprisingly good one, too, I almost didn’t notice it.” He twisted the end of the telescope, and suddenly Mira saw clean cinderblock walls in good repair where there had only been a crumbling wall moments before.

“All right, good going, you found the secret door. Now let’s go kick some butt,” Mira said, starting forward, but Alcor pulled her up short with a hand on her shoulder. 

“Wait. We don’t know how to get in yet. And we need a plan for once we do -”

“I have a plan,” Mira said. “Go find Ian. Get him out. Hit anybody who tries to stop us.”

“That’s not a plan,” Alcor said, and even though he was still behind her, Mira could hear the pout in his voice.

“Hit them _hard_ ,” Mira suggested.

“Still not a plan,” Alcor said, sounding deeply unimpressed. “If we can get in there and somehow break their security wards - without triggering the backup security wards, that is - then I could access a floor plan. We’d just have to figure out how to get in without triggering any alarms. This place is so secret it officially doesn’t exist, so I’m guessing they’ve got at least one genetic lock on the door. I might have to possess some high-ranking military offi- Mira, where are you -”

Mira ignored him as she shrugged off his grip, pushing away the telescope and stalking towards the fallen fence beside the entrance and the offending building beyond it. Alcor trailed behind her, spouting a litany of worry that she barely heard.

“Mira, this is a really bad idea, this is still government property, they’ve probably got this place twelve kinds of booby-trapped! And even if you make it there, you can’t just hit a secure vault door until it opens -”

“Watch me,” Mira said, adjusting her grip on the bat as she tuned Alcor out. 

The moment she took a step across the fence, protective spells tripped all around her. Mira kept walking as they sparked and sizzled off of the shielding spells woven into her gear, as blue fire ignited spring-traps and curses alike, bursts of demonic magic rising from the ground and kicking up sand, exploding in midair like fireworks. She walked calmly through the barrage, not stopping even when the ground opened up practically beneath her feet and a hasty bridge of hovering debris, borne up by a suspicious blue glow, built itself literally under her feet with each step she took.

About five feet from the wall, she broke into a run.

The hologram fizzled as she ran through it, and a smile crossed her face as she saw she was headed straight for the door. She raised the bat, ready to strike with all her force and momentum, and caught a glimpse of blue fire flashing out of the corner of her eye as Alcor flash-fried some protective spell before it could strike her. She could hear his voice rising in the background as she lined up and swung.

“No, no, no, no, no, don’t -”

_Crash_.

Purple lightning flew in screaming arcs from the bat as it smashed into the lock. Mira gritted her teeth as the impact shuddered up the bat and through her shoulders, but she managed to hold on even though her fingers stung and she knew she’d have bruises the next morning.

“What are you _doing_?! That’s a vault door! If you smash the lock it’ll just seal itself!”

Mira pulled the bat away, hoisting it up over one shoulder, and brought it smashing down on the flat black screen of the lock (now in shards around a sparking mess of wiring). “Then make sure it doesn’t!” she shouted, over the sudden scream of alarms.

She could imagine exactly the face that Alcor was making as the door lined itself in blue fire and slowly, slowly, creaked open. “Now they know we’re here,” he said, exasperation heavy in every syllable, as he snapped his fingers and the sirens died with a gurgle.

Mira didn’t look away from the doorway, from the thickness of the door slowly swinging outwards. She looked down, checking to make sure her armour was still intact, and raised her bat, ready to swing. A tap of one finger, and it was lined again with flickering purple lightning.

“Good,” she said, as the doorway opened up before her.

...

The hallway that the door led out into was long and white and echoing, and it curved gently out of sight into the distance.

Ian looked all around him as they walked, noticing the low ceilings, the glaring LED panel lights overhead, the occasional heavy steel doors dotting the walls at odd intervals and the heavily-armed guards flanking each door. Their heads turned to watch him pass, expressions unreadable behind mirror-dark visors. Ian made a point to give them each a massive grin as Agent Brown led him and the two backup guards along the hall.

He tried not to think about what – or who – might be behind those other doors. It would be all right. _He_ would be all right, and – and he’d worry about everything else later, when it didn’t feel like his head was filling up with helium and was trying to drift away.

Brown hadn’t said anything since they’d left the cell. If he wanted out of here, Ian knew he was going to have to change that. He cast his mind back over the past few months, trying to pinpoint just what he’d said and done that had tipped Alcor over the edge. And wasn’t that a weird, uncomfortable knowledge to have, that he’d been pissing off the most powerful, dangerous demon in existence because he was – had been – shared a soul with - Alcor’s mortal enemy.  From that perspective, Alcor had actually been holding back.

Ian tried to shake off the chill that thinking about what Alcor could – would – have done to him sent shivering down his spine, with little success, and to divert his thoughts towards something slightly more productive. Make the agent uncomfortable, get him off-balance, and he was halfway to escape already. Body language was as good a place to start as any. Of course, if he tried draping himself across the agent’s shoulders in an outwardly friendly gesture, Ian had no doubt he’d be shot before he could get a word out, but he _could_ probably sneak forward a few steps into Brown’s personal space without really seeming to mean to.

He took a few experimentally longer strides, until he was nearly stepping on the back of the agent’s shoes. A (only slightly manic) grin split his face when he saw the lines of Brown’s shoulders grow almost imperceptibly tighter. You didn’t _need_ the Sight to be able to read people’s emotions. You just had to know a little bit about people.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” he said, deliberately pitching his voice just slightly too loud for the hush of the hall. The words bounced away down the hall, echoing off the low ceiling and the steel walls as a metallic reverb just under his voice.

This time, the tension in Brown’s shoulders just before he squared them was immediately obvious.

He still didn’t speak, though, so Ian went on, trying not to let the nervousness boiling in his throat and churning in his guts speed his words up out of ‘easy and confident’ into ‘manic’. “The white’s nice, veeeery institutional, nice cold atmosphere of sterility and isolation! Great choice for breaking down the human spirit! But wow, it’s gotta be a bitch trying to get the bloodstains out! And all that brushed steel picks up fingerprints like whoa!”

“No forensic investigator is going to come down here,” Brown said, and Ian mentally gave himself a point. So the low ceilings and lack of windows hadn’t lied; they were underground.

He started running his mouth again to try to avoid thinking about what else Brown’s statement had implied. “Hah! I bet not. You government types don’t care what kind of mess you make!”

The sound Brown made, a short, sharp burst of air, sounded like the beginning of a sentence hastily bitten off. Ian took a deep, satisfied breath, craning his neck to smile back at the guards escorting him. This was already going better than he could have expected.

It didn’t take long at all for Ian to have to mentally recalibrate. Apparently, Agent Brown had also realized just how much he’d let slip, and was determined not to let it happen again. He said nothing in response to any of Ian’s best deliberately provoking comments, and before long had regained the same unruffled implacability he’d shown at the apartment. The escorts were just as bad, if not worse; at one point, Ian wondered (first silently, and then aloud, deciding that maybe it’d annoy them into showing a little personality) whether they were androids. Their blank expressions didn’t so much as flicker.

“Wow, this is boring!” he complained, loudly, trying to drown out the black wave that seemed to loom over him, gathering height as it drew nearer and nearer to crashing down. If he couldn’t pull this off – he tried to wipe the thought away before he could finish it, but horrible possibilities still unspooled madly in the back of his mind, like an old-fashioned film reel dropped to the floor, scenes interrupting and cutting through and intermingling with each other, out of order and disjointed but still terrifying. The initials he’d found scratched into the cell wall swam in front of his eyes, and the thought of the number of tallies that had accompanied them made Ian’s mouth go dry. How, how could someone survive for so long here, in a place like this, and in what kind of state – “This is without a doubt the _worst_ secret government bunker I’ve ever been in! You could at least put a few of the crimes against humanity out where somebody can see them!”

He was nearly shouting, he could tell, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Brown still said nothing, looking to his left along the wall as their pace slowed, and Ian couldn’t quite breathe right, couldn’t swallow around the constriction in his throat, couldn’t shake the feeling that he was walking up the steps to the guillotine. They were getting close to their destination, there was no other way to read it, and all he’d been able to discover was that they were buried somewhere underground.

He only had one last ace up his sleeve, and, as Brown locked his eyes on a door just a little ahead of them and veered towards the left wall, Ian played it.

“Bet you guys made things a looot more interesting for ‘P. H.’, huh?”

Brown stopped. It was so abrupt that Ian, still following slightly too close behind him, nearly walked into his back. The agent turned, slowly, to face the steel door on his left that must be their destination. Then, and only then, did he look down at Ian.

Ian took an involuntary step back. Brown’s expression was as impassive as it had always been, but there was something like thunder in his eyes.

“It just kills you, doesn’t it?” he said, and the sound of a voice that wasn’t his own for the first time in he didn’t know how long was like an electric shock down Ian’s spine. “Not knowing?”

While Ian was trying to think of something clever to say in response, something to deny the way that the agent had just skewered everything that made him him with two short sentences, Brown nodded to the guards flanking the door. They both nodded back, one stepping aside to press his hand to the flat black panel of the lock beside the door, then motioning for Brown to do the same. There was a brief flash of light, and the door ground ponderously open.

Brown turned back to Ian, and the corners of his moustache – unbelievably – twitched upwards, into what Ian was starting to recognize as a smile.

“Well, you won’t have that problem for long, son,” he said, and gestured towards the open door.

...

“Why did you do that? You could’ve gotten yourself killed!”

Mira grunted as she swung the bat, the tip bashing into the stock of a gun that one of the guards had raised at her and knocking it from his hands. She pushed the end of the bat back, under her arm, and into the ribs of another guard, who fell backwards into a third with a ‘whoof’ of expelled air. “The armour charm held, what’s the big deal?”

“The armour – it’s not meant to stand up to bullets or lasers or offensive spellwork! It’s meant to prevent bruises!”

Mira paused, batting away a stray lock of hair that had fallen out of her bun and into her eyes. “Pfah! This stuff is made for _roller derby_. And remember how many strengthening charms you put on it? I’ll be fine.”

“Roller derby,” Alcor echoed dumbfoundedly, as the six guards who remained standing slowly circled Mira.

Mira met Alcor’s eyes and held eye contact as she dodged away from one guard and bodychecked another, slamming her shoulder into his solar plexus and jabbing her elbow into his stomach.

Alcor rolled his eyes as another of the guards lunged at Mira and she tripped him, turning so his face met her fist on the way down. “Fine, point made.” A shark-like grin split his face in two, revealing rows of jagged teeth, and he said, “That’s not a bad idea.”

Mira looked around, trying to keep count of her opponents, and noticed that one had drawn back down the short entranceway, trying to line up a shot. She dove under the butt of a gun that one of the guards swung at her, punching straight up under his jaw. His head snapped back with a soft grunt, and she swung him between her and the gunman before turning to look at Alcor again. “What are you talking about?”

Alcor snapped his fingers.

The guard Mira was using as a shield was wrenched out of her grip and sent flying across the room. So were the other five, panicked shouts filling the air as jet-propelled antigrav skates suddenly appeared strapped to their feet, sending them shooting all around the entryway and smashing into the walls.

Mira ducked under one who flew past headfirst, screaming, and blinked when she realized that Alcor had also given each of them a cute little skirt and a jersey with a saucy, punny name overtop of their bulletproof combat gear.

“Thanks, I guess,” she said, stepping over the still form of a guard whose jersey identified him as ‘Pain Eyre’. “Took you long enough to jump in.”

“What? You ran in swinging, even after I tried to stop you! I told you we needed a plan, but you just wanted to bash heads in! I thought you didn’t want my help!” Alcor shrugged, shoulders and wings rising and falling in unison. “And you looked like you were having fun.”

Mira thought about demons, and thought about the give of flesh and the satisfying crackle of breaking bone under her bat, and said nothing.

“Can you get this door open?” she asked instead, crossing the short entranceway and not-so-gently shuffling a still-twitching ‘Dizzie Bennett’ out of the way with her foot. 

Alcor floated up behind her, peering over her shoulder. “Hm. Tricky. This one’s attached to a seperate security system, so it can only be opened by somebody inside the compound who has access to what’s probably some kind of central security booth -”

“Fine, I’ll do it myself,” Mira sighed, putting her bat back into its holster across her back and pulling a short knife from its sheath strapped to her thigh. She held it up as she surveyed the seal in the middle of the two halves of the heavy steel door, looking for the best place to work the blade in. 

“No no no!” Alcor’s hand darted out to grab her wrist before the blade could even touch the door. “Do you even know what kind of spells - ugh. Just stand back.”

Mira took a few steps backward, glancing down and behind her as she went to make sure she didn’t trip over any more bodies. 

Alcor stared at the doors for a moment, and then, softly, they began to glow. A dim yellow light radiated from the steel, growing brighter and brighter until Mira had to shut her eyes and turn her face away. Even then, she could still see the glow through her eyelids.

There was a _plip_ , and then a _plop_ , and then Alcor said, “Oh, oops!” in the kind of bright, almost laughing voice that he used sometimes when he’d been looking too long at the future or had one too many summons in a day, and suddenly Mira was plucked up into the air. She kicked out as the _plip_ s and _plop_ s increased in frequency and intensity, until they almost sounded like a waterfall. Alcor, sounding annoyed, said, “Hey! If you don’t stop wiggling, I’m gonna drop you!”

The light, thankfully, vanished, and Mira dared to open her eyes. Alcor had hoisted her up under her armpits, and wrapped his wings around them both, enfolding them in a little cocoon of darkness.

“Put me down,” Mira said, as authoritatively as she could manage.

She could hear the grin in Alcor’s voice as he said, “Sure! You’ll fry your feet off, but why not?”

“What? What are you _doing_?”

Alcor didn’t answer, but a moment later he unwrapped his wings from around them both.

The first thing Mira noticed was the heat. The moment Alcor’s wings unfurled, it hit her like a slap in the face. His wings must have been blocking it out, just like they had blocked the now-vanished light and a strong smell of cooking meat, not quite like bacon but close enough to fool an inexperienced person.

The scorching heat radiated up from the floor, which was awash with a silvery, sluggish liquid, sizzling softly where it lapped against the bodies on the floor and sending up the strong smell of cooking that made Mira want to gag.

Where the door had stood, only a few long strings and drips of molten metal remained.

“That works,” Mira said, when the overwhelming urge to vomit had passed.

Alcor flew forward, a few wires and half-melted wards spitting blue sparks as they crossed the threshold. Mira looked around the hexagonal room before them, and saw no sign of anything resembling a door.

Alcor set her down just beyond the rapidly-cooling spill of molten metal that had, moments ago, been the only door. Mira checked that her bat was still securely tied against her back before sliding her knife back into its sheath. “What is this?”

Alcor grinned, with too many teeth, and Mira glanced past his shoulder at the lumps that were barely recognisable as bodies. Then he snapped his fingers.

There was a shriek of metal, and the floor shook. Mira grabbed her bat and pulled it out over her shoulder as the room shuddered and jumped. In the brushed-steel walls all around her, dim reflections of herself, little more than streaks of colour, crouched defensively with her. “What’s happening?”

Alcor frowned thoughtfully, and then glanced down, his expression clearing. He snapped his fingers again, and the blob of cooling steel on the floor sheared neatly off along the threshold.

There was a long, low, throaty rumble that seemed to come from everywhere around them at once, and the floor dropped away.

Mira shrieked as she suddenly found herself standing on nothing. “What did you do!?” she screamed, and then let out a loud ‘oof!’ as she slammed down onto the floor only a few feet below her. A queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that they were still falling, though, even if it was at a slower, more controlled rate, and when she looked up, she could see the doorway rising away from them.

Alcor was still smiling, his hands clasped behind his back. “Figure it out yet?”

Mira raised a hand to her eyes, staring up at the ceiling that was rapidly disappearing into the dark. “An elevator?”

“Ding ding ding!” A wave of one gloved hand, and red and white confetti burst from Alcor’s sleeves. Mira picked one small piece off of her shoulder, and flicked it away when she realised it had left a bloody stain on the sleeve of her pastel-purple t-shirt. “For your prize, you get a whole new set of nameless mooks to beat to death!”

“Don’t say that,” Mira said, eyeing the walls around them and looking down along the sides of the shaft, trying to decide which wall the door would open on.

“Why not? It’s true! I gotta say, you may not be a Pines, but boy oh boy, you sure got the family dark streak!”

Mira blinked, the impending fight momentarily forgotten as she turned to look at Alcor. “What? What do conifers have to do with anything?”

Alcor gave her a wink. “I think this was your floor.”

Mira spun in a watchful circle as the elevator slowed, bat raised and ready to bash in heads. “You know what, no. It doesn’t matter. You’re being weird and cryptic again, and I’m pretty sure something about those bodies back there cooking or something set you off into Dreambender, Devourer of Souls mode, so you’re just trying to freak me out and make me doubt myself because you think it’s fun and I’m not listening to you! These guys took Ian, they killed that girl, and even if they didn’t do it personally then they’re helping it happen, so don’t even start! They’ve earned a good beatdown.” She shifted her grip on the bat, steadying it. “And if you say one more word about it I’m going to hit _you_ in the nose with this thing.”

Alcor only smiled, that lazy Cheshire-cat grin that Mira had come to associate with cult-bashings and sacrificial blood and nothing at all good.

There was a long, drawn-out, ghostly moan from the elevator as the door came into view. Mira counted twelve guards that she could immediately see, twelve raised weapons ranging from old-fashioned projectiles to ones that looked like they might be models of the Deathcaster that had never hit the commercial market. She threw herself flat against the floor as the guards began to fire, curses, laser beams, and bullets all whizzing over her head and bursting in the air above her like a tiny, localized fireworks show. A few pinged off of the metal lip the molten door had left, a few more ricocheting from the shimmering shield her gear cast as the elevator ground slowly downwards. 

As soon as she could see the tops of the guards’ heads from her vantage point on the floor, Mira started to roll. She rolled out of the elevator and crashed into two guards who were brave or stupid enough to be first in the pack, headbutting one and kicking the other in the throat. They crashed to the ground in a heap, Mira’s momentum carrying all three of them to the floor. 

In the short time it took her to untangle herself and bounce back to her feet, ten weapons were trained on her.

Mira spun her bat in one hand, smiled, and slammed the bat down, hard, on one of the guards’ collarbone. He dropped his gun with a scream, and Mira kicked it behind her, hearing it rattle down under the elevator platform. A hand wrapped around her ankle, one of the men she’d knocked over, and she casually brought the bat down on the offender’s wrist before spinning to smash it into the arm of a guard who was lining up a shot. There was a _crunch_ , and the man screamed, his plasma pistol whining as it charged and then discharged, sending a long streak of vivid orange searing through the hallway and exploding against the massive LED array set into the low ceiling overhead.

The whole hallway was suddenly plummeted into darkness.

“Alcor!” Mira shouted, dropping to the floor. The guards would have night vision, lenses or enhanced sight, but she had no such advantage. The only way to level the playing field again was - “Fire!”

There was a beat, barely long enough for Mira to suck in a breath, and then, from the very centre of the small cluster of guards blockading her against the elevator, erupted a brilliant plume of blinding blue flame. What looked like part of the flame detached, in a shape vaguely resembling a man, and began to run down the hallway before falling heavily to the floor. It didn’t get up again.

Mira swallowed bile and raised her bat again, tapping the end to make it crackle with purple light. Blue flame backlit the two men who lunged at her, and she smashed one in the stomach, purple lightning crackling out from the point of contact to stun both the guard she hit and the one he stumbled into, knocking them both to the ground.

Mira didn’t see what happened after that, because that was when the second guard hit her, knocking her onto her back and pinning her arms as he drove a knee into her gut. At first, all she felt was the air leaving her body, and then the pain hit her. Vaguely, as she tried to curl into a ball, she heard shouts, gunshots, the roar of the flames as long cyan ropes lashed out and sucked screaming guards into its heart, Alcor’s manic laughter, but all of that was background noise. 

Mira lashed out, kicking wildly as she struggled to free herself. A particularly vicious kick met something with some give, and the guard’s grip slackened just enough for her to wrench her right arm free. She reached up and pushed up his visor, thinking vaguely of jamming her thumbs into his eyes or breaking his nose, but before she had a chance to, the guard’s gloved hands closed around her throat and squeezed.

Mira gasped, reflexively, but there was no more air. The world started to go fuzzy around the edges as she struck out weakly, scrabbling at the thick fabric over the guard’s fingers as everything narrowed down to her burning lungs and the full weight of the guard bearing down on her airways and her arms fell limp at her sides and, and -

The handle of her knife brushed her fingers.

Mira didn’t question it, just yanked it free and stabbed upwards with all her fading strength. She met resistance, and pushed harder, feeling something warm and wet gushing over her fingers and turning her grip slippery and treacherous. Still, she clung to the knife like a lifeline, and, just as even the brilliance of the fire started to fade into darkness, she squeezed the handle with everything she had left and _twisted_.

The grip on her throat suddenly went slack, and Mira gulped down a frantic gasp of air, driving her knee up and into some vulnerable part of the guard who had pinned her down. There was a noise like an animal in pain, and he let her go, sinking down to press his face against the floor. Mira pushed herself backwards, out of his reach, absentmindedly wiping the blade of her knife off on her leggings.

The fire still crackled, but nothing else in the dim hallway moved.

When nothing continued to move, Mira set her knife down with a dull clack on the linoleum floor and started, shakily, to push herself up. She was on her knees, her hands flat against the floor in front of her, when a hand shot out and wrapped around her right wrist.

Mira shouted, and the guard leered up at her, and then his whole face was stretched thin over his skull, and then it tore away like a cheap latex mask and all there was was muscle and bone and blood -

Alcor let the body drop, letting out a distasteful sniff as he dropped the handful of skin that had been a face unceremoniously on top of its owner. He looked up at Mira, and his eyes were solid with gold and distant with eternity.

Mira held his gaze, despite the feeling of being something very small and slightly disgusting peering back up the microscope at the scientist studying it. Finally, after what felt like hours, Alcor blinked, the gold retreating rapidly as he cleared his throat and looked away to fuss with his cufflinks. “Oh great, now these gloves are _covered_ in blood.”

Mira let out a long breath, not quite in relief, pushing herself slowly to her feet before stooping to pick up the knife and her bat. “Somebody must’ve seen that. It won’t be long before they send more. We’ve gotta get out of here.” She scanned the hallway before them, the flickering light of the still-burning blue flames illuminating rows of heavy steel doors stretching out until they curved gently out of view. “Which one are we looking for?”

Alcor paused in his minute examination of his suit, giving his lapels a proud tug as he stared into the elevator. “Guess you’re wishing _now_ that you’d listened when I told you we needed a plan to get in and break the wards so that I could access a floor plan -”

“Never mind, I’ll find it myself,” Mira interrupted, starting forwards towards the first door. She ground her teeth together and tried to ignore Alcor’s voice behind her, but that proved easier said than done.

“ _What_? Seriously? We’re seriously doing _this_ again? Didn’t you learn anything from having to have me rescue you twice already?”

Mira stopped, mid-step. She took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders before she turned to face the demon. “You rescued me.”

Alcor canted his head to one side and looked pointedly at the flame beside her. “No offence, but I kind of did.”

Mira met his eyes, and held up her knife with the blood-encrusted hand. “I don’t call that a rescue.”

“Oh, come on! You were outnumbered ten to one! I was evening out the odds!”

“No, you were having a blast setting people on fire and laughing at them running around screaming while that guy was choking me to death!” Mira shouted, pointing in the general direction of the black lump that had been a guard not long ago with the end of her bat.

“Oh, and you weren’t?” Alcor’s wings flared, and his eyes narrowed dangerously. “Like I said. It looked like you were having fun.”

“That’s -” Mira dropped her bat with a _clang_ , tugging at both of her buns in frustration. “That’s not the point! You nearly let me _die_! Twice!”

“But I didn’t!” Alcor protested.

“I don’t care! Another few seconds and you would’ve had another Mizar!” She could have left it there, she could have walked away, but something ugly and mean and wound way too tight by the entire day so far made her add, “And maybe that’s what you want.”

The silence that followed was somehow more than just the absence of sound.

“What?” Alcor said, and Mira straightened up, taking a deep breath.

“I said maybe that’s what you want! Maybe next time you’ll get one you can _really_ rely on to keep you human, somebody who’ll pat you on the head and tell you you’re not a monster when you’re all covered in blood and laughing and never get mad at you about anything! Somebody more like - like -”

An image, or maybe just an impression, flickered through her mind’s eye, of someone bright and colourful and glittering, a flash of a smile, but it vanished before she could put a name to it.

The fire was still crackling, but the air around Alcor still managed to look darker than the rest of the hall. “Is̕ ̸t͏͜h̸͘a̛͜͝t́͞͞ wh̵͡à͡t̶ ̛y͢͏o̶̡͟u̡ ͘t͘̕h͜in̕͜͞k͜?“ he asked, and the broken LED panel overhead spat sparks as the floor shook. “You know what, that’s no҉t̴̛ ́͘a̶ ̴̧b̵a̷̴͟d͞ ̶i̵̢̕de͘a. Maybe next time around, you won’t be so eager to rush into things that’ll get you _killed_!”

Mira opened her mouth to shout something back, something barbed and vicious, and stopped. There was something wrong with Alcor’s voice, something in that last word that she’d never heard before.

It sounded almost like a sob.

“Are you -”

“No!” Alcor’s voice was defiant, angry, but there was definitely a quaver in it. “Ma- Mir- _you!_ How can you be so _stupid_!”

“ _Me_!? _I’m_ stupid?! Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“You don’t get it! You’re all -” Alcor stopped, both hands held out and clawed, and curled them into loose fists before letting them drop, his glare softening into a pleading expression. “You’re all I’ve got left.”

Everything that Mira had been planning to say, every little thing she’d ever imagined throwing back in Alcor’s face, flew out of her head. Instead, all she said was, “What?”

Alcor opened his mouth, and was drowned out by the shriek of an alarm.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to [Seiya234](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiya234/pseuds/Seiya234) for letting me use her as a resource on anxiety and dissociation! Speaking of which, most of the warnings from Chapter Seven apply. This is not going to be pretty, folks.

Ian wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find beyond the door he’d been driven through, but it definitely wasn’t something that looked like a cross between a doctor’s office and a forensics lab, into which someone was moving a wizard’s workshop piece by piece. 

He let his guard slip as the guards and Agent Brown followed him into the room and the door shut with a final-sounding slam behind them, openly gawking at the oddities on display. What looked like a whole fetal spider-bat was bobbing gently in a tube of some clear viscous liquid next to a tablet with a handful of eagle feathers strapped to it with red string. Pipes in various states of substantiality led out of a sealed metal container almost as tall as he was, from which a brilliant blue-white light was leaking at every seam. The far wall was taken up almost entirely by a massive, sliding steel door, but someone had nailed up an iron horseshoe over it, with quartz crystals jammed into each of the holes around the horseshoe’s arc. Someone who used this room clearly knew their way around conventional magitech, and had found it inadequate.

Brown took a few steps forward, herding Ian past a silver-topped cane mounted in some kind of electrical apparatus that he itched to reach out and touch, and towards an array of crystal screens against the nearest wall. Someone was standing in front of the array, frowning as she tapped furiously on a keyboard marked with what Ian recognised as the runes of the Elder Futhark. She swore as they drew closer, glaring at one of the screens, apparently oblivious to their presence.

Agent Brown cleared his throat. “Doctor Stromberg?”

The doctor jumped, and swore again, turning to face them with a nervous grin as she adjusted her black cat’s-eye glasses and smoothed down her dark suit jacket under her white lab coat. Her light blue eyes were bright and uncomfortably intense as she leaned in to peer almost hungrily at Ian. “This is him?”

Brown nodded, once, and the doctor clapped both hands together in obvious delight. “Finally! Come here, let me get a better look at you.”

A nudge from the barrel of a plasma rifle was all the encouragement Ian needed to close the distance between him and the doctor with a few stumbling steps. She put a hand on his shoulder to hold him in place, grabbing his chin and pulling his head forward with the other, peering into first one eye and then the other, yanking his mouth open to look inside. Ian tried to pull away, but she dug her fingers up under his chin and behind his jaw. Pain flared, a sudden sharp reminder of his total lack of control, and hate bubbled up black and viscous as tar in the pit of Ian’s stomach.

Without warning, the doctor pushed him away, and Ian stumbled back, both of the guards raising their guns with a jerk. The doctor grabbed him again, both hands on his shoulders, and Ian resisted the urge to flinch. Her hands were small, but warm through the fabric of his layered shirts, and her grip was steely and surprisingly forceful. She didn’t move for a moment, looking him over from arms’ length, and Ian tried to even out his breathing, slow the frantic, juddering pace of his heart, under her eager, inquisitive gaze. It didn’t work. It felt like he was being stripped down, peeled away into something small and neatly categorized and helpless under her measuring eyes.

“Amazing!” the doctor said brightly, giving one of Ian’s shoulders an absent-minded pat before pressing a hand over his heart and cocking her head to one side with a distant expression, as though she was listening for a heartbeat. “If you didn’t know, you’d never guess he wasn’t a normal person!”

“Could say the same for you, toots,” Ian snarled, and bit off the rest of his sentence at the rising whine of a plasma rifle being primed.

The doctor blithely ignored him, turning her head to address Brown before spinning to grab a pair of thin latex gloves from a box on the counter beside her and pulling them on with a snap. “This is fantastic, even more potential than the last one!” She gave one of Ian’s shoulders a push, spinning him around to face the guards behind him and the guns they held. There was a tug at the back of his head, the doctor’s fingers curling in his hair and pulling, and Ian felt his own fingers clench almost involuntarily into fists. The gesture was casually possessive, the guns a blatant display of force, everything calculated to make him feel threatened and powerless and small. 

And much as he’d never admit it out loud, it was working. He almost couldn’t believe it, in a disconnected sort of way. He knew exactly what they were doing, exactly why it affected him the way it did, but even knowing what was going on couldn’t stop the churning in his gut or the creeping numbness in his fingers or the sudden vicious urge to lash out and hit the doctor when she grabbed his right arm and raised it up perpendicular to his body. He bit his lip and drummed the fingers of his left hand against his thigh, trying to remember to keep his cool, that he had them where he wanted them, even though there was a yawning pit in the bottom of his stomach that grew wider with the suspicion that maybe he didn’t have things under control after all. 

_She wouldn’t be grabbing at you like this if she didn’t think you were harmless,_ Ian told himself, quietly. _She isn’t expecting anything from you._ And Brown was seeing something in Ian that frightened him. There had to be a way to use this to his advantage. There had to be.

Ian scanned the room as the doctor hummed and tsked and prodded him in the sides and tilted his head uncomfortably to the side without saying another word to him. The only exits seemed to be through the door back out into the hall, which he noticed the flat black panel of a genetic lock holding closed, or through the sliding door on the other side of the room leading into what, Ian didn’t know. The door into the hall might be a wiser choice, but he’d need to wait until they opened it again, while the sliding door looked a little less secure -

“Hm. I think so,” Dr. Stromberg said, brightly, spinning Ian back around to face her and Brown and giving him an enormous, excited grin. “I can’t wait to see whether this will work, I’ve had to improvise and modify a lot to fill in the blanks, information on Cipher isn’t really widely available - well, of course not, since there are no recorded appearances since the Transcendence. Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine!” She laughed, and patted the keyboard beside her fondly. “He looks good, more resilient than the last one, I hope he’ll stand up better. We didn’t get much mileage out of her.” She reached over and absently patted Ian’s shoulder, in much the same way she’d patted the keyboard, and he tipped his head back and took as long and deep a breath he could manage in an attempt to tamp down the anger that flared hot and bright just under his skin.

Brown gave a slight nod, his eyes flicking to Ian and then quickly back to the doctor. A fierce sort of delight rushed through Ian with the realisation that he was worrying how freely they should speak in front of him. “I hope so, Janice. Upstairs weren’t too happy about having to arrange disposal on short notice.”

The doctor - Janice - waved a hand dismissively. “You worry about the politics, I’ll worry about the practicalities. Would you pass me that brush? You. Cipher. Hold still.”

Ian let out the steadying breath he’d taken in a sharp burst of air, but he didn’t move. Janice grabbed the brush that Brown held out to her - artist’s quality, wooden handled, flat and broad and soft-bristled, with something that looked like it might be a steadying symbol painted in blue and green on the handle - and put it down on the island in the centre of the room before sliding open one of the drawers set into its side. A waft of whitish mist rose from it, and she reached down and pulled out a jar with frost along its sides, unscrewing the top and holding it out to Brown without looking in his direction. “Stick that in the microwave for about half a minute, will you?”

Brown took the jar, wincing slightly when he touched it, and Janice bumped the drawer shut with her hip, softly humming a pop song under her breath as she turned back to the array of screens. Ian took a step forward, glancing back at the guards as he did so, but they made no move to stop him. “What are you doing?”

Janice started, swore again, softly, and gestured to a scan of what looked like a crumbling sheet of paper covered in dense black handwriting. “Just recreating an ancient ritual.”

Ian squinted at the display. “What kind of ancient ritual? That looks like 21st-century English.”

“Oh, good catch!” Janice laughed, an almost braying laugh with a hint of nervous quiver in it, and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Yes, actually, it’s uh, it’s from a 1980 manual on what the author calls ‘cryptids’. Creatures of magical descent.” She lowered her glasses and gave Ian a serious look over them, though he could tell that she was trying not to smile. “Thought I told you to hold still?”

Ian thought something very unkind, and managed to dredge up his best, flirtiest grin. “You told _Cipher_ to hold still.”

The smile dropped out of Janice’s expression, replaced by a curious, penetrating interest. She replaced her glasses on her nose, tilting her head to one side as she studied his face. “Fascinating. You don’t associate yourself with that part of your identity?”

_Not_ the response he’d been hoping for. Ian bit his tongue. “I think this ritual is what’s fascinating. How did you find this manual?”

“You didn’t know about yourself, did you?” Janice said, meeting Ian’s eyes for a moment before turning back to the computers, apparently oblivious to the wordless glare Ian had fixed on her. “Hm. Makes you wonder, sometimes. Is that heated?”

Brown looked up, pulling the jar from another door in the island. “How’s this?”

Janice took it from him with a quiet thanks, dipping a gloved finger in and looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. “That’ll work. Now, you, I really do need you to hold still.”

The finger she drew out dripped red, with something that looked unpleasantly like blood. 

“It’s pig,” Janice said, when she saw where Ian’s eye had gone, setting the jar down beside the brush on the island with a click. She picked up the brush, giving him a searching look. “The research indicates an association with goats, but the few sources I could find all say Cipher was fairly protective of them, so I chose the next best thing.” She dipped the brush into the jar, and turned back to Ian. “Close your eyes.”

Ian thought about the guns still trained on his unprotected back, and closed his eyes. 

“You know, there was some disagreement in my research about this,” he heard Janice say, over the roar of blood in his ears and the feeling of something lukewarm and wet and metallic-smelling being painted over his face, across his right eye. “My best sources said it was an essential part of a summoning, marking out a target whose mind could be invaded, but there were some older texts that talked about it as a ward against the demon, using it to block his all-seeing presence. Something about a ‘blind eye’. A few mentioned memories too, but I’m not sure how that was involved.”

Ian put out a hand to steady himself against the island, flailing for a moment before he found it. He was somehow certain that if he didn’t support himself somehow, he was going to fall over, and possibly float away. It felt like all the blood had drained from his head, had retreated from his limbs and left them numb.

“Summoning?” he asked, in the most normal voice he could manage.

“I told you not to move,” Janice’s voice said, from very close to his face, hot breath brushing against the clammy, bloody brushstrokes over his eyelid. 

“You’re planning to -”

“There, I think that’s good,” Janice said, proudly, and he heard the scuff against the tiled floor as she took a step backwards. “Open them.”

Ian blinked his eyes open. The bloody X over his right was sticky and strangely heavy, holding the lid in place for a few seconds every time he blinked.

The world looked much the same.

“There,” Janice said, with a broad smile, gesturing towards Ian with a glance over at Brown. “That should be it.”

Ian quickly ran through a mental checklist of everything Alcor had ever said about him, matching it up against his current feelings. Nothing seemed to have changed. He still didn’t feel much like murdering anyone, let alone the entire world, and the only vague irritation he felt towards Alcor was because the demon had hidden his tablet pen about a week ago and still refused to reveal where he’d put it.

His knees suddenly went wobbly, and he tried not to visibly sigh with relief. Whatever they’d tried to do, it hadn’t worked. He was fine. He was himself, and he was fine, and now - he bit down on the grin that the bubble of joy rising in his chest tried to bring to his face - now, if he played his cards right, they’d think they had him entirely under their control. If he could persuade them to trust him -

“Excellent. Do you need anything?” Brown asked Janice, and she patted the pockets of her white labcoat, smearing pig’s blood across its white fabric, before capping the little jar and placing it back into the refrigerated drawer.

“Um, if you’d grab my tablet, we should be ready to go,” she said, peeling off her latex gloves and tossing them into a trash can labelled CONTAMINATED. Brown nodded and crossed the room, picking up the tablet with the eagle feathers strapped to it, and Janice nodded. “Great! Let’s get this show on the road.”

She took a few steps forward, stopping in front of the sliding door and pressing her hand against the flat black panel of the lock. The lock flashed green, and she stepped aside, looking over at Brown.

Agent Brown gave that faint moustache-twitch of a smile, and turned his back to Ian, holding his hand to the lock. A bright green light swept over his palm, making Ian blink.

The steel doors in front of them slid open with a loud, harsh buzz, and Brown led them out into a vast, high-ceilinged room. It was sterile white, all steel and dead-snow laminate. This was a place where things died. People. People died. Ian pressed a hand to his forehead, trying not to think about where that thought had come from.

There was a circle in the centre of the room.

...

Mira’s stomach hurt.

Her muscles ached where the guard had driven his knee into her abdomen, growing worse as she ran, and the accompanying ache in her throat was making it difficult to breathe. Besides, she was tired from the fights she’d already been through, her legs burning and and heavy and her movements sluggish as she dashed down the hall away from the elevator and the fire still burning there. And there was nothing even slightly resembling cover in this hallway. She’d have to stop and fight soon, and she was already dreading it.

There was a crackle like a thin film of ice breaking underfoot, and one of her kneepads sparked. Mira threw her head back and groaned. “Not now,” she grumbled, under her breath, as she sped up.

Alcor, flying beside her, not even noticeably winded, frowned. “I _told_ you, those aren’t meant to stand up to -”

“Would you - give it - a rest?” Mira snapped, between breaths.

“I’m just saying -”

“If I’d - listened - to you - I wouldn’t - be in this situation?” she gasped, over the sound of sirens.

Alcor looked off to his right, giving an extended shrug. 

Mira skidded to a halt, grabbing her bat from its holster on her back and pressing herself against the wall. “Well, I’m -” She stopped, taking a deep breath in before she tried to speak again. “I’m in this situation, and right now it’d be a lot more useful for you to help get us _out_ of this situation than floating around saying ‘I told you so’.”

Alcor looked like he might be about to argue, but the sound of feet against the linoleum flooring echoing down the hall cut him off. Mira stiffened, raising her bat, and Alcor nodded, hovering a little closer to the wall. “Right. Um.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and his outstretched wings flickered with stars, surveillance footage, images of the fight that had just happened, an apple tree in a forest of pines, a blueprint, a wide-eyed alien-looking creature...

His eyes snapped open, and he pointed down the hall. “Okay, the wards here are still messing with my omniscience, but there’s someone behind a door down there who’s familiar and connected to you. There’s only so many people that can be down here.”

“Great,” Mira said, glancing to her right down the hallway, then to her left back in the direction they’d come. “How long will it take to get us in there?”

“Well, I’ll have to -” Alcor looked at her face, and said, “A couple of minutes.”

“Awesome. Let’s go,” Mira said, with one last glance in the direction they’d come. She pushed herself off the wall, and started to run again, her legs burning with every step.

“Do you need a hand?” Alcor asked. “I can probably loan you some energy at no cost.”

“I’m fine,” Mira said. “Just point me in the right direction.”

“Are you sure? You don’t look fine, and your gear -”

“I said I’m fine,” Mira interrupted him. “Look, I know you’re a worrywart, but I’ve got this, okay?”

“That wasn’t what you were saying five minutes ago when I was saving you from that guard,” Alcor snapped back, annoyance clear in his voice. “I seem to remember something about somebody needing to be rescued...?”

“That’s not what I said! I was saying you _hadn’t_ rescued me!”

“What, and get yelled at again for not letting you take care of yourself?”

Mira stopped in the middle of the hallway, spinning to stare Alcor down. “Are you serious? That’s what you think I meant?”

“Well...” Alcor hovered to a stop too, shrugging defensively. “Yeah, I do! Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

“No!” Mira groaned, pressing the palms of both her hands against her forehead. “That’s not even slightly - look. This is not a good time or place to talk about this. Can it wait until we get home?”

Alcor shrugged again, his face settling into a scowl as Mira glanced back over her shoulder and started to jog again. “Fine. But you started it,” he muttered, and Mira slid to a stop again, brandishing her bat under his nose.

“For the love of - are you actually _twelve_?”

Alcor made an affronted noise, his eyes darting back and forth down the hallway. “Wh- no! Why would you even think that?” He puffed his wings out, like he did when he was trying to be threatening, letting darkness sweep over him as he intoned, “I am an a̷nc͘ient͝, a̡g͜el̶éss̶ b̶̷̡e҉̵i̶̶n̶̨g͜ ̢́o̕͠f͡ p̨͟͠u͘r̡e̸̴ ̷͞en͢͞er͢͢͡gy͏̷ wait no, _shit -”_

There was a shout from down the hall behind them, and Mira spun to see guards pouring out of the elevator. She muttered a curse under her breath. “Okay, Alcor, gonna have to ask you to be a weirdo when we’re not about to get killed. Where’s this door?”

“Right! Right, it’s -” Alcor pointed down the hall in front of them. “About ten doors ahead of us, on your right.”

Mira didn’t say anything more, just started to run. After a moment, there was a noise a little like someone falling heavily onto a feather pillow from behind her, and Alcor reappeared at her side, looking suspiciously innocent. “What did you do?”

The demon grinned, and pointed back the way they’d come. Mira half-turned to look over her shoulder, and noticed that the hall had filled entirely with a giant, inflatable castle.

“You’re not serious,” she groaned.

“We’re rescuing a damsel in distress,” Alcor said, with a shrug.

Mira picked up the pace. “You really are twelve.”

She was so busy listening for gunshots or laser fire that it took her longer than usual to realise that Alcor was being oddly silent. Mira took a long breath in, letting it out gradually as she slowed to look closely at the identical doors to her right. “What’s the matter?”

Alcor still didn’t answer, even to deny that anything was wrong, and Mira turned away from the door she was examining to meet his eyes. “Hey. You’re about one more non-answer away from becoming a bona-fide dark and brooding bad boy.” 

Alcor sputtered, but when he caught the glint in her eye, he crossed his arms over his chest and curled into himself with a sulky pout and, most importantly, stayed silent.

Mira shut her eyes, searching her memory for the worst lines she’d ever seen a fanfiction author put in the mouths of her favourite characters. “Oh, Alcor,” she said, in her best, breathiest, bodice-ripper-heroine voice. “If only I, a mere, dumb, shallow mortal, could understand what darkness lurks in the haunted depths of your tormented soul -”

“Okay, seriously?” Alcor said, uncurling, and Mira grinned. “Do you _have_ to do that while we’re doing the whole Alcor-and-Mizar thing?”

“Only if you keep refusing to talk to me,” Mira said. “Hang on, I lost count. Which door is it?”

“Still another three to go,” Alcor said shortly. “And we’ve already talked -”

“Yelling at each other doesn’t count,” Mira said. “I’m gonna ask you again, and if you don’t answer this time, I’m going to fling myself dramatically into your arms and faint in full view of all of their security cameras. What’s the matter?”

Alcor drew himself up like he was about to start raining fire on someone, and then blew out a long breath, shoulders and wings both drooping forward. “I just - nothing. It’s nothing. I’ll figure it out -”

“Not with that attitude, mister,” Mira said. “Alcor. Why are you being so weird?”

“Weird? I’m not being weird, I’m - you’re the one who’s being weird!” Alcor waved his hands vaguely, looking up at the ceiling to his right. “One minute we’re best friends, and then the next you want me to leave you alone! I can’t figure out what you want!”

“Then maybe you should just listen to me when I _tell_ you!” Mira raised both her hands, and then let them drop again, shaking her head. “I - it _feels like_ you aren’t listening to me. I just want you to listen to me. Don’t just assume you know what I want or what’s best for me because you knew what was best for some other Mizar. And don’t act like you know better than me! This is _my_ life. Maybe I’ve made some mistakes, but they’re _my_ mistakes! And just because you can see some of the future, sometimes, doesn’t mean you know everything!”

“You’re right!” Alcor shouted, and Mira realised she’d been raising her voice as well. “You’re right, I don’t know everything! I should! But I don’t! And I don’t know how to - it’s been a long time since I did anything like this, okay? I didn’t even realise how much I’d forgotten about being human until - until you guys came along."

There was a ringing shot from down the hall, muffled slightly by the inflatable castle, and both Mira and Alcor turned to face it. A long, tense moment passed without another sound before they turned back to face each other.

“I don’t know how to be your - friend,” Alcor said, quietly, so quietly that Mira wasn’t sure at first that he’d even said anything, or whether she was hearing echoes from down the hall. “I used to, I used to have _people_ , but everything’s changed -”

“Well, _duh_ ,” Mira said, and then clapped both hands over her mouth as the word bounced away down the hall and Alcor’s head snapped up to stare at her. “I’m not any of those people, Alcor! Of course it’s going to be different! That doesn’t mean - it’s not like I don’t care about you, or you don’t care about me.” 

Alcor muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Mira met Alcor’s eyes and stared, until the demon blinked and looked away. His voice was heavy and sullen when he said, “It doesn’t feel like it lately, okay?”

Mira’s jaw dropped. “Are you for real? You still think this is about you?”

“That’s not -”

Mira swung her bat wildly, and Alcor narrowly dodged getting hit in the mouth as she gestured along the hall. “You honestly think I did all of this just to piss you off?”

“No! But -” Alcor shook his head. “I tried to warn you about Ian, but you wouldn’t listen -”

“Oh my god!” Mira waved both arms, dropping the bat and pressing both palms over her eyes as she walked in a short, tight circle. “Can you get it through your head that this has _nothing_ to do with you!”

“It has everything to do with me!”

“Only because you made it all about you!” Mira dropped her hands, holding them out in front of her like she was about to grab Alcor’s neck and wring it, which didn’t feel so far from what she wanted to do. “It had nothing to do with you. I met him, I liked him, I asked him out, we fell in love, he got in trouble and I’m here to help him! If you hadn’t stuck your stupid nose in -”

“Would _you_ listen to _me_? It has everything to do with me! Because I care about you!”

Mira stopped flailing, crossing her arms over her chest. “You wanna explain how caring about me gives you the right to make my decisions for me?”

“I didn’t - I _t҉̘̻̭̻͎ͅo҉̺̟l̘d͙̮̲̼̲_ you! I don’t know what to do!”

Alcor’s voice echoed loudly, reverberating like a lightning strike throughout the hall. It was nearly impossible to tell, in the midst of all the echoes, that his voice had cracked on the last two words, but the way his face crumpled sort of gave it away.

“I just saw you with somebody who tried to hurt you, and I - I panicked. And then you got mad at me so I didn’t tell you about Rosa and then _this_ happened and - I don’t know how to keep you safe, Mira! I don’t know how to - I’ve spent the past thousand years watching people _die_ , okay? Lots of people I loved, and some people I didn’t like all that much, but they just - you just _go out_ so fast and it’s getting faster every year and I thought trying to connect with people again would help but it _doesn’t_ , and there’s not enough time, and _I can’t keep you safe.”_

Mira bit her lip. The inflatable castle squeaked against the ceiling, rocking back and forth, and a single scream echoed from inside it, hastily silenced.

“I’m gonna tell you what Ian told me,” she said, and held up a hand when Alcor shot her a disbelieving look.

She looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember the conversation. The LED panel overhead was nearly blinding, and she shut her eyes.

“He said we’re all going to die,” she said, at last.

The look Alcor gave her was even more disbelieving than the one before.

“No, listen. He said...a whole lot of stuff, I guess, but what it comes down to is we only have so much time together. So do you want to spend it fighting, or do you want to spend it as friends?”

Alcor looked like he’d just bitten down on something sour, but his expression softened as the seconds ticked by and Mira didn’t look away. “I -” he started, and then froze, his ears and wings both twitching backwards. 

“What?” Mira asked.

“The other hall. They’re coming up from a floor below, I didn’t think -” He mumbled something that sounded like a very outdated swear word, before giving Mira a push in the small of her back. She bent over and grabbed her bat, starting into a slow jog down the hall without taking her eyes off of Alcor. “Come on!”

He gestured, and the third door down from where they were standing exploded off its hinges and flew across the hall, slamming into the wall and tearing a hole the size of Mira’s head into the steel. Mira ran towards the now-open doorway, picking up speed as she turned the corner, bat raised to strike.

She slammed it into the visor of a guard who tried to push a gun in her face, diving under a guard on the other side of the door. There was a frizzling sound a little like static, and the man dropped to the floor like all his tendons had been cut.

Mira looked over at Alcor, about to ask what he’d done, but Alcor wasn’t looking at her. Instead, his eyes were fixed on something beyond her shoulder. He was wearing an expression she’d never seen on him before.

It took her a moment to recognise it as horror.

Feeling an icy fist clench just under her breastbone, Mira adjusted her grip on her bat and turned, slowly.

At first, she didn’t see what was so frightening. All she saw was the tree, or maybe two trees, spectral white and silver and glowing faintly, split neatly at the base and rising in gnarled and twisting branches to a little taller than the height where Alcor’s head was hovering. It wasn’t much to look at, just branches like clawed fingers curling in on themselves, covered in shrivelled white lumps that, Mira realised as she walked closer, were the withered husks of apples.

Then she looked down.

There was a railing all around the tree, and as Mira looked down she realised why. A hole was cut through the floor around the tree, a hole that turned the floor Mira was standing on into a balcony and let her look down into a room below, a vast room full of machinery she couldn’t name and could even less explain.

She was pretty sure, though, that the almost blindingly bright thing beating against the walls of the massive, clear tube below, from which the tree was sprouting, was a soul.

…

There were plenty of other things to look at – the armed guards standing around the walls, the pillar candles that rose nearly to Ian’s chest and flickered with blue flames, the wall of lit screens across the room that projected security camera feeds and scans of old texts and blueprints and strange writing Ian didn’t recognize out at the white-coated researchers standing in front of it – but the first thing that caught the eye was the circle.

It was massive, reaching nearly out to the walls on all sides, ringed with the blue-lit pillar candles Ian had also noticed, and it was, when he looked closely, really made up of concentric rings of circles, all painted in silver with mechanical precision and filled with arcane writing. He recognized a few of the designs in the outermost ring, a few familiar words and phrases; common, familiar spells, but elaborated upon, the nets they cast drawn tight.

It was ring upon ring of binding and protective spells, woven so tightly that not even the weakest shade or most powerful ifrit could slip or tear its way through. A single pathway through to the centre stood open, sigils and wards half-sketched, waiting only for a few silver lines to slam them shut like prison doors.

And around the very innermost ring, looking surprisingly mundane next to the elegant Latinate script and detailed signs drawn in each of the other rings, were a handful of symbols – simple sketches, really, of everyday objects. That wasn’t what made them feel so familiar to Ian, though, even though he knew he’d only seen them all laid out like this once before.

At the time, he’d been dreaming they’d been burning in the sky all around him.

For a moment, Ian forgot how to breathe, struggling to draw in shallow gasps of air. He’d thought he’d known what he was getting into, thought he’d had the upper hand, thought he’d been pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes – but, but why was this here, _how_ was this here, what did they really want from him, and all the little things that everyone had said since this whole ordeal had started all fit into each other to reveal a picture, a constellation of uncomfortable truths connected by shimmering silver lines, and what if, what if they were right, all he’d done, after all, all he’d had to do to convince them that he was what they wanted him to be was just to be himself –

He saw, rather than felt, the hand that Brown dropped heavily onto his shoulder, heard the quiet, sharp click of the guns the guards behind him held being locked onto him with startling clarity. He’d been so sure he was struggling for breath, but that couldn’t have been real, because he was drawing breath just fine now and the circles were so detailed, every silver line so sharp…

He knew he was standing still, staring frozen at the innermost ring of the vast network of circles in front of him, but it didn’t quite feel like it. Everything was…strange, not exactly numb, but distant, a little dreamlike, almost as though it had all slowed down around him. He wondered, in a distracted sort of way, why he hadn’t noticed the wisps of smoke coiling through the air before, hadn’t noticed the way one of Janice’s shoes was wearing down at the heel or the single fair hair curling over the bald dome of Agent Brown’s head, hadn’t noticed the way his own heart kept beating, rhythmically, like a kick-drum in his chest.

“Weren’t expecting to see that, were you, son?” Brown said, and there was no triumph or smugness in his low, steady voice, just a calm, quiet satisfaction. “You wouldn’t believe how many demonologists we had to consult to dredge that one up. Surprising how much you can find out in just two weeks, when you know what to look for.”

He gave Ian’s shoulder a short, proprietary squeeze. Ian barely registered the pressure. It didn’t quite seem to matter. But then, none of this did, especially himself. Whoever that was.

“No mistakes this time,” Brown said, to thin air, looking over the circle with a definite nod, pride in a job well done. “We’re not letting an asset this valuable go to waste.”

It felt inevitable as gravity when he gave Ian a gentle, guiding push towards the open pathway to the centre of the circle and Ian began to shuffle forward. He stopped on the edge of the outer ring, and Brown said, in the same kind of voice you might use to encourage a shy Little Leaguer going up to bat, “If you don’t keep walking, we will shoot you.”

“No you won’t,” Ian’s mouth said, and Ian’s mind marveled at how it put the sounds together, how sounds could communicate meaning at all. At how clinically interesting – and yet pointless – the whole thing was. Here was Ian Beale, a mind piloting a meatsack, arguing for the continuation of its finite mortal existence. “I’m too valuable an asset for that.”

Brown hummed thoughtfully. “Valuable, maybe, son, but for our purposes, you don’t need all of those limbs.”

It made perfect, logical sense. Ian wondered, vaguely, whether it would hurt if they shot him. Probably it would.

He took a step forward, across the outermost circle. It tingled, faintly.

He took another step.

Somehow, he found himself at the centre of the circle.

Ian looked down. His toes were barely brushing the line around the innermost circle. Less than an inch from the tips of his sneakers, the light glinted from the silver paint sketching out a rough geometrical shape that he recognized as a pine tree. Under the bluish light from the candles and the glare from the overhead LEDs, it almost seemed to wink.

Ian turned, and saw silver lines slithering across the floor, tying themselves into the unfinished symbols behind him. He followed their trails back to Janice, tapping furiously on her modified tablet. Ian knew, in an abstract sort of way, that he was human and no wards against magic, no matter how well-crafted or sensitive, could affect him, but the terror and certainty went deeper than knowledge.

There was no way out.

It all slammed back down on him in an instant with almost physical force, leaving him gasping. This was happening, this was happening _right now_ , and it was happening to _him_ -

There was a whine, a sharp sting, and suddenly Ian’s left shoulder was on fire. He grabbed at it, vision blurring as tears sprung to his eyes, and saw his hand come away bloody.

“He only grazed you. Just you take that last step, or we’ll take out your knee, son,” Brown said, matter-of-factly, from outside the rings of circles. Ian only vaguely heard Janice’s sound of disgust, her admonishment not to break his body before they had to.

There was no way out. There was no way out there was no way out _there was no way out_ -

Ian gripped his shoulder, wincing as he turned back to face the circle. Blood spattered across the pine tree symbol as he stepped across the final ring, every bead bright and perfect and almost gem-like. He’d almost expected something cataclysmic to happen when he entered the last circle, the roof to fall in or the earth to open up underneath him, but all he felt was a faint shiver as the hairs along the back of his neck rose.

From behind him, Janice’s voice said, “Right, so everything’s in place? Clear the circle, we’re starting.”

There was a short pause, like the whole world had taken a deep breath in and was holding it to see what would happen.

Then the chanting started.


	12. Chapter 12

The summer Ian had turned fourteen, one of the artists his mother represented had gone triple platinum, a record-breaking heatwave had hit the West Coast, and Ian had tried to kill himself.

He’d gone walking down to the beach with Rosa one afternoon and burned the soles of his bare feet on the asphalt on the way home. Rosa had teased him for not wearing his shoes the whole way back, but Ian hadn’t cared. He’d been thinking about firewalkers, about phoenixes, about the way things died and came back, but only in the heart of destruction. When his mother had asked how he’d gotten so badly burned he said he’d been distracted and hadn’t felt it. It was only half a lie.

(His shoulder burned.)

He’d spent a lot of that summer walking barefoot, fascinated by the pebbly pavement underfoot, the slow, warm throb of heat rising up and numbing the sensitive nerves, the scratch and scrape of broken glass (and there was always broken glass in the city) and the slick coolness of blood on a burn. There was a lot of that summer that he didn’t remember, but he remembered lying flat on his back on his bed as the sun wheeled from six o’clock to ten, trying not to fall into the starry void overhead, and he remembered the sting of fresh cuts against hot pavement.

(The blood leaking between his fingers was hot and quickly growing sticky, sealing his fingers together as it dried.)

Alan had moved in with his mother over the spring vacation and suddenly there was no room to breathe. Everywhere was too small, too tight, too _confining_ , and there were days when Ian wanted to struggle out of his own skin. His mother and Alan were worrying about him. Ian was worried too. His dreams had been strange, deep and slow and ripening. He’d wake up gasping with anticipation that was indistinguishable from fear.

He’d spent a lot of that summer not sleeping.

(There was a hook in his chest. Or not quite in his chest. Not in the space his chest occupied - if he looked down, he could still see it was undamaged. But there was something hooked through the centre of him, something he couldn’t dislodge, and it was pulling.)

There wasn’t enough time for sleeping, anyway. There wasn’t enough time for anything. Time was trickling by in handfuls of seconds and the world was spinning too quickly around the sun and July was half over before June had even started. His mother’s hair was shot with grey and the lines around her eyes when she laughed had started to stay when she’d gone quiet again. His father’s clothes were no longer hanging in the closet and his old violin had been relocated to the basement. The office library was emptied out and Alan’s books were filling up the dark wood shelves. Time plowed relentlessly forward and his father was disappearing like the beaches, every tide eroding a little more of his presence. The whales were disappearing and the woods were disappearing and the great libraries of the ancient world were gone, lost with all the knowledge they’d hidden, and the future kept shrivelling away and soon nothing would be left behind. He wanted and wanted and wasn’t sure what the want was for. Everything was wrong, nothing fit and everything was edges and corners and too small.

There was something coming, and it was something great, and something terrible, and he was afraid.

And Ian just wanted it all to…stop.

(He hadn’t felt this way since he was fourteen and the world had been too small, the universe too vast, everything inside of him too much. He hadn’t felt this way since he was fourteen and the whole world was an exposed nerve, the whole world was a chessboard, the whole world was bared teeth. He hadn’t felt this way since he was fourteen and afraid of what was happening inside his own head.)

The recording cut out, abruptly, spitting a few garbled, backwards-sounding words. Ian’s vision greyed, and it took everything in him to stay upright as colour bled back in. His whole body felt ill-fitting, clumsy, weak as water.

Janice frowned at her tablet screen, then at the screen array on the wall across from her. “That can’t be right. All our previous tests indicated that extraction’s phenomenally painful. Is it less effective because I’m using a prerecorded chant?” Her tongue stuck out, just slightly, over her bottom lip as she furiously tapped notes into her device. “Hey! Any of you guys any good at early-21st-century English pronunciation?”

A few of the guards scattered around the room shrugged, and one of the white-coated lab assistants on the other side of the room looked around and awkwardly half-raised her hand. Janice’s face lit up, and she pushed past Agent Brown in her rush to get around the circle. “Great! Here, read this incantation for me.”

Ian barely had time to draw in a breath before the lab assistant started to stammer out the incantation, and he was plunged back under.

The heat settling on his back like a weight.

Music trickling up from the living room as he lay in bed, staring as projected stars wheeled across the ceiling.

The smell of the hospital the last time they’d visited his father, sweat and the sharp bite of urine under a smothering layer of antiseptic and reheated meals.

The chill of wind off the mountains ruffling in his hair, the warmth of his father’s hand in one of his and his mother’s in the other. Even then, even wrapped in joy and a wealth of love, the hollow certainty of the approaching end.

He was laughing at some silly, audacious thing Mira had done, and she was wearing that determined frown that made her nose scrunch up adorably, but her nose was button-shaped and her skin was too light and she was much, much too young, almost swallowed by the sunset-patterned sweater she wore, and her scowl was real and so was his contempt and ooh, shouldn’t his feet be touching the ground - 

Mira, his Mira, leaned her head against his shoulder. “You’re adorable.”

Ian cracked his neck, tilting his head back to look thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “ _You’re_ adorable.”

Mira snuggled up a little closer against him, twining one arm through his. “Hmm, nope. It’s you. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.” She swung her other arm, tapping him lightly in the middle of his chest. “Bwap.”

Ian let himself topple over backwards, feigning surprise as Mira shrieked and let go of him, dissolving into giggles. “Oh no! I am defeated! Curse you, **_Shooting Star -”_**

\- it was the worst thing he’d felt in his entire existence, it was _unbeing_ , it was the dissolution of everything he could call a ‘self’ and it was, for him at least, the end of the world...

The colour flickered out of everything around him for slightly longer this time, and through the slow ebbing of the overwhelming flood of memory, Ian saw the lab assistants and guards looking around them with slightly worried expressions. So it wasn’t just his vision. He wasn’t sure whether that made things better or worse.

His cheek was pressed against something hard and smooth and cool. It took him a moment to realise that it was the floor. Well, that at least explained why everything seemed to have tilted on its side.

“That's more like it,” Janice sighed, sounding relieved. She yanked her tablet back from the assistant, shooting Ian a look that was downright hungry as she looked excitedly over to the array of screens on the wall beside her. “Come on, baby, show me results!”

Brown crossed the room to stand beside her at a leisurely pace, barely sparing Ian a glance.

They were going to die for this, Ian decided, with a kind of vague, disconnected shock at his own sudden rush of viciousness. Every last one of them. They were all going to die for this. But first, they were going to _suffer_.

He sat up slowly, gingerly pressing a hand against his chest. Phantom pain raced through him, electric and searing, before dissolving back into his memories.

Memories that weren’t his.

Ian didn’t move. Couldn’t. The air all seemed to have been sucked out of the room, and his own grip felt weak as his fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt. Terror ripped through him, driving shards of ice through the hole the hook had left in the core of him and leaving him paralyzed.

He barely registered Janice’s voice chattering away until she said, “All right, run it again!”

“ _No_.”

Ian didn’t realise he’d said anything until everyone turned to stare at him. Janice’s whole face lit up, and Brown looked taken aback.

“Great! He’s still coherent!” Janice held up the tablet, aiming the camera lens at Ian. “Whoops, wait a second.” She slipped a hand into the pocket of her coat and whipped out a triangular stone with a hole in the very centre, carefully settling it so that the tablet camera looked through the hole. “Okay! What’re you experiencing right now? Disorientation? Pain? Are you still self-aware?”

Ian’s hands balled into fists.

“Don’t do this,” he said, half wishing that his voice hadn’t cracked, half wondering if it wasn’t a good thing. Janice thought he was weak. Brown thought he was frightening. It couldn’t hurt to sound like he was scared of himself.

He made sure to focus on Janice, not to look too much like he was intentionally baiting Brown, when he begged, “You don’t know what you’re messing with.”

Janice smiled. “Nope! But I can’t wait to find out.” She leaned back, turning to the lab assistant who’d read the incantation. “Okay, we’re going over the same thing again -”

It had to be some kind of desperate energy that propelled Ian to his feet. He definitely didn’t think he could stand until he was suddenly upright, starting forward towards Janice and Brown and the screens. “ _Don’t_! I -”

The air frizzled around him as he crossed the inner ring of the circle, the lines of each of the simple symbols flaring red, and he slammed into something invisible and solid just beyond its border.

Ian stumbled back. “No, no no no, _no_ ,” he whispered, reaching out and pressing a hand flat against thin air. Gold lightning sizzled and sparked away from the point where he couldn’t go any farther, numbing his hand and sending little shocks up his arm. He pulled it away, cradling it against his chest and curling around it like he was trying to hold himself together. It didn’t feel so far from the truth.

Janice’s eyes were so wide he thought they’d pop out of her skull. Brown was frowning thoughtfully at the circle. He wouldn’t meet Ian’s eyes.

“I told you it’d work!” Janice said, nearly shouted, punching Brown in the arm without taking her eyes off of Ian. Her voice was too loud, too excited, and Ian curled further into himself, digging his fingers into his arms and biting back a hiss when one found the wound on his left shoulder. The pain was good, it was grounding, it meant he was still here and still alive. There was a way out. There was always a way out.

Even if it meant going through.

“And the best part is, the further we go with the extraction, the more effective it’ll be!” Janice was grinning from ear to ear now. Ian turned away to glare at the row of silver symbols across from him, the expanse of protective sigils that, now, he couldn’t cross.

He could still hear the note of caution in Brown’s voice when the agent spoke, though, and it flooded the hollow in Ian’s chest with a fierce sort of pride. “You don’t want to go overboard.”

“Oh, come on, you’re not scared your pet demon’s going to slip its leash?” Ian abandoned dignity in favour of pressing both hands over his ears, but he could still hear Janice’s bubbly laugh, only slightly muffled. “Come on, I’m not _stupid_ , that’s why all those circles are there! Never summon anything bigger than your head, right? Although that recording I played - that’s from the last known attempted Cipher summoning, post-Transcendence. And there’s more at the end of it. Somehow they got hold of the demon’s Name.” Her voice grew quieter, but no less penetrating, hushed with awe. “Took out twelve city blocks. Everyone dead. Heads like pinatas. I’d love to see what it’d do to this guy, even if we would have to administer it remotely and the recordings don’t have quite the same _oomph_ as the real thing...”

Her voice trailed off, and for a minute, Ian just breathed, his eyes shut, counting each inhale and exhale.

“All right!” A sharp burst of sound was probably Janice clapping her hands together. “Enough chatting, let’s run it again!”

Ian barely had time to panic before the assistant started reading again, sounding more confident this time, and -

Alcor was playing that strange tone on his fiddle again, rising and rising and never going anywhere, and it was making Ian dizzy, his head spinning like it always did at the sound of heavy synthesizers but worse than ever before. The sound was vibrating in his chest until he couldn’t feel his own heartbeat, couldn’t hear his own thoughts, couldn’t tell where he ended and the sound began - 

A piercing shriek tore through the haze, and Ian surfaced slowly, feeling drunk and faintly disquieted, like he’d lost an important thought that had been on the tip of his tongue. The assistant had stopped reading, but the sound that had interrupted her went on and on, rising and falling in shrieking wails. Ian sat up, and the candles around the circle all blew out, filling the air with acrid coils of black smoke. All around the room, the guards were hurrying around the circle, grouping by each of the doors, over which massive slabs of steel etched with protective circles were sliding into place. The lab assistants clumped together in front of the wall of screens, shooting worried looks at all the ones that showed security camera footage and whispering to each other.

“What?” Janice yelled over the sound of the siren, her voice heavy with disbelief. She threw up both hands and then let them fall by her sides, shaking her head.

Brown reached out and pushed her back from the circle, behind him, pressing two fingers to his earpiece. Ian could hear the tension in his voice as he said, “Locking down? How did they get past the entryway?”

“What?” Janice repeated, and for the first time Ian could hear a trace of fear in her voice. It was like a shock of fresh, cold air. “Who got past the - ugh. Get the camera feeds for the building up, would you?”

Two of the lab assistants splintered off from the huddle in front of the screens and started typing furiously. In a handful of seconds, the entire wall was displaying security camera footage, most screens showing guards with warded riot shields and heavy weaponry rushing down identical hallways. Two displayed images of an enormous inflatable castle squashed into the middle of the hall, with an unnervingly cheerful image of an elderly man’s grinning, gap-toothed head over the entrance. A pool of blood was slowly creeping out from under the castle and across the floor.

And on one of the screens, a girl in a white and pastel-pink gas mask hefted a bat crackling with purple lightning over one shoulder and looked directly up into the camera.

Ian straightened up, staring at the screen, hardly daring to breathe.

“ _No_ ,” Janice gasped, slapping both hands down flat on the counter in front of the wall of screens. “No, don’t you _dare_ touch my tree of knowledge, I put _so much work_ into that -”

“How did this breach get this serious?” Brown thundered into his earpiece. “Who allowed this to happen? What are you doing to contain it? What do you _mean_ the airlock was compromised?”

Janice reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his tailored black suit, and Brown shot her a dirty look. She just tugged a little harder though, pointing at the screen. “No wonder our containment protocols aren’t enough! _Look_!”

On the screen, the girl in the gas mask had turned to face the door of the vast room she was standing in. A wave of static overtook the screen as something black flickered into view, a top hat, a flash of curly brown hair, a golden eye, fixed directly on the camera -

The screen burst into a blur of pixelated nonsense, and then went black.

In the sudden silence, Janice’s reverent voice sounded like a bell. “That’s _Alcor_. Alcor and Mizar are here.”

Ian tried to tamp down the swell of relief that made his lungs ache and his throat feel tight. Mira was just one person, even with Alcor at her back, and the entire might of the government was against her. She could get hurt - she could be _killed_ \- she could even end up in the same position that he was.

And yet, Ian couldn’t help feeling that, if Mira was here, then everything was going to be all right.

...

The thunder of footsteps coming down the hall startled Mira out of her horrified daze. She barely had time to turn to face the door and wish she’d thought to shut and lock it behind her before the first wave of guards flooded in. The first row crouched, setting up a wall of shields that lit up with crackling silver protection charms, a second row sliding into place behind them.

Mira didn’t wait for them to aim and fire. She turned around and backed away from the tree a few steps, and, as the first shots rang out, ran forwards and vaulted over the railing.

The pit of her stomach dropped out as she leapt, watching the floor drop away below her and a tangle of humming wires and pipes snake past a full storey below her. Then they were past, and she smashed into the tank holding the thing she was uncomfortably sure was a soul stomach-first, the bruises along her abdomen screaming in protest as she struggled to suck in a breath. Her sneakers slipped against the smooth sides of the tank as she tried to pull herself up, and in blind panic, thinking of not much other than the drop below her, Mira reached out and grabbed desperately at the first thing she could find.

Her hand wrapped around something that felt a little like wood and a little like bone, and her head was suddenly full of screaming.

Mira shrieked, though she couldn’t hear herself over the painful howls filling her ears, and hauled herself bodily on top of the tank before letting go of whatever she’d grabbed hold of. She lay flat on her stomach for a long moment, breathing hard, her ears ringing in the sudden silence. Her vision was blurred, and she reached up and brushed tears away from her eyes. That must be, she decided, how empaths experienced the world. It had felt almost exactly like she’d just been overwhelmed by someone else’s unbearable, voiceless agony.

Mira looked up. Inches from her fingers, one of the two trunks of the silvery tree projected from the tank below. But it wasn’t quite the same as the withered tree she’d seen only moments before. Its gnarled, crooked branches were unfurling, spreading themselves out straight and strong and majestic.

From her position lying flat below them, Mira thought they looked almost like a pair of antlers. 

Something whizzed past her ear and pinged off of the hard plastic of the tank. From behind her, Mira heard a deep, slightly muffled voice shout, “Don’t shoot! You’ll damage the containment unit!”

Mira looked over her shoulder, carefully rolling over so that she could sit up and face the line of guards who had moved forward to lean over the railing, aiming an array of heavy weaponry at her. Her back brushed against the tree, and screams burst in her ears and fireworked around the inside of her skull. She pulled sharply away, but not before a sense of strength flooded into her, strength and steadiness and protection. 

She looked down, through the tank, and though it didn’t have a face, she knew somehow that the little fist-sized blue-white ball of light from which the antler-tree sprouted was looking back. 

Mira pressed her hand, palm-down, fingers splayed, against the roof of the tank, and felt warmth pulse underneath her fingers.

She set her teeth, and pushed herself to her feet. “Alcor!”

There was another shot from one of the guards lined up along the railing, and another held up a hand, shouting, “I said _hold your fire_! We can’t damage the tree!”

There was a _creak_ from somewhere above her, and Mira looked up, swallowing a shout when she saw the branches curling down towards her. They wrapped loosely in front of her, like a ribcage, and stopped, leaving her plenty of room to move but blocking the guards’ shots. Mira looked down again, at the tiny ball of blue-white light, and thought about a kind, beautiful smile, and the kind of strength it took to survive four years of captivity and torture, even beyond your death.

“Alcor!” she shouted again, raising her bat over her head. “This weapon for something that can cut this soul free!”

There was a lot of panicked activity from the guards overhead, but Mira ignored it. A low, throaty rumble was filling the room, starting to shake the tank underneath her feet, and darkness was spilling up from the mess of machinery below and from the ceiling above.

Blue fire engulfed the bat in her hand, weighing it down until it dropped back into her grip. Mira grinned at the chainsaw that roared to life in her hands, blue flame flickering around its blade, and laughed when she saw that Alcor had decked it out with purple sparkles.

She raised it, and brought it down on the tank, at the same time as the upper floor of the room that held the tree peeled back, like the skin of an orange, sending guards tumbling through jagged rips in the metal and running desperately from the hole in the floor. Mira sawed desperately as the pipes and wires below tore free in a flurry of sparks and hissing steam, lashing around like snakes through the suddenly clouded air. Through it all, the tank kept shaking underneath her, until it was all Mira could do not to cut into the trunks of the trees.

“Alcor!” she shouted again, over the hisses and howls that she wasn’t sure were all coming from the machinery, looking through the clouds of steam and darkness for the demon.

For a moment, everything stopped. The room was perfectly still and silent, the pipes and wires falling limply to the floor. Mira looked around at the jumble of electronics and torn metal, but saw no sign of Alcor.

She shrugged, and cut through the last few inches of the tank.

The room exploded around her.

For a single, perfect instant, Mira floated, caught in the brilliant white light from the released soul. Finally, she saw Alcor, reaching out with an expression like she’d never seen him wear before, softer and sadder. He took hold of the tiny ball of white light, and something took shape under his hands, a figure that was hard to see if you looked directly at it, the soul sitting right where its head should be and antlers rising proud and straight from it. Mira wasn’t sure how she’d ever thought they were a tree.

The figure turned to look at her, and smiled. For a moment it was someone Mira didn’t recognise, someone who looked vaguely familiar nonetheless, and then it shifted without changing at all, and it was Paloma, had been all along, with the smile that Mira had seen on the news and tiny white flowers budding from her antlers.

Mira smiled back, and reached out a hand, and Paloma reached out too, and their fingers brushed, just slightly.

Then Alcor did something with his hands, and opened his mouth, and the glass-clear figure whirled into the ball of blue-white light, which compressed itself into a single point before winking out.

Mira fell.

Her shoes sprouted wings before she hit the ground, tiny flapping batwings that carried her down gently and set her down on her feet on a pile of smoking rubble that had been what was probably very expensive machinery only seconds before. The room was unrecognisable. The tank that had been the centrepiece had vanished, blown to bits, and the upper floor was peeled back in long, charred metal scrolls. Tiny blue fires still burned amidst the tumbled heap of rubble.

“Alcor?” Mira called, softly. There was a hush in the room that she couldn’t quite explain, but she knew she didn’t want to break it.

There was a soft _pop_ and the demon winked into existence beside her, glowing faintly - or, not exactly glowing, but looking brighter and more solid and somehow more real than anything else around him. His eyes were sparking faintly, and when he moved, he left the impression of golden echoes in the air behind him.

“She’s moving on,” he said, shortly, and pointed at the far wall. A ball of blue fire rolled off of his index finger and flew across the room, blooming in a rose of flame against a door Mira hadn’t seen before and blowing it almost gracefully outwards. “We’re going this way.”

“Wh-” Mira started to say, but the look Alcor gave her made the questions die in her throat. The only time she’d seen him look nearly so sad, nearly so old, was when he’d tried to explain to her what being Mizar meant.

“Are we going looking for Ian?” she asked, instead, when her tongue worked again.

“No,” Alcor said, flatly. He stared at the door he’d blown open, and absently handed Mira back her bat. It was warm to the touch, and she noticed fingermarks impressed in the handle that had definitely not been there when she’d given it to him. 

“We’re going to find him.”

...

Janice was trying to persuade the lab assistant who had read the incantation to go again when Brown pressed two fingers against the device in his ear and went white.

“They what? No. No, I understand. Yes, we’re locked down.”

Janice’s face fell. “They took out my tree, didn’t they.” She swore, thumping one fist on the counter beside her. “Ugh! I had it so close to bearing fruit! Another few months -”

“Evacuation?” Brown said, in a tone that was rich with the most emotion Ian had ever heard him show. “Alcor and Mizar are in the building and you want me to pack up an in-progress experiment with a -” He glanced over at Ian, and squared his shoulders, dragging his voice from fear into anger, though he still looked an interesting shade of grey. “A highly unstable element, and hope we can make a run for it? Are you an _idiot_? Where are our containment protocols for demonic activity?”

Janice scowled, clasping her hands behind her back and stalking forward to the edge of the circle to stare contemplatively at Ian. “You’d better deliver,” she said, after a moment, before turning to Brown. “We can get a seal on him now, can’t we? It might not knock him out this time but -”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Brown said, taking his hand away from his earpiece. “We’ve still got -”

Janice gave him a pitying look. “It’s _Alcor_ ,” she said. 

Brown stared back down at her. “We’re not finished here.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Both Brown and Janice turned to look at Ian. He knew he should feel something - relief or excitement that Mira and Alcor were here to save him, fear of what Janice and Brown might do to him before they could make their way here - but all he could find was a curious calm, a kind of cool anticipation.

He canted his head to one side when they didn’t say anything, studying each of their faces in turn. “Hey, I mean it! What’s so important to you schmucks that you’d risk your finite mortal existence to yell at me in a near-dead language?”

Janice’s stare was curious and penetrating as usual, but for some reason Ian didn’t feel quite as much like a bug being pinned to corkboard by an enthusiastic collector as he had the last several times she’d turned it on him. “Don’t you know?”

Ian opened his mouth to say that no, he didn’t, but blinked. That wasn’t true. He had all the pieces. _Don’t you know. It just kills you, doesn’t it? Not knowing?_ Summoning. Memories that weren’t his. _You won’t have that problem for long._

“Of course I do!” he said, meeting her stare and giving her a cheeky smile. “Not a bad plan, actually! Only about the second- or third-worst I’ve ever heard! But how exactly are you going to make me answer your questions?”

For the first time since he’d met her, Ian saw Janice’s piercing stare falter.

“We’ve got methods,” she said shortly.

Ian shrugged his injured shoulder, his grin growing at the way her eyes widened as they flicked to the mess of blood on his sleeve. “Doesn’t do you much good when you’re too scared to step inside the ring of binding circles!”

Janice glared. She forced a smile onto her own face, but it looked strained. “Don’t worry. Down here, we’re endlessly innovative.”

“I bet!”

Just behind Janice’s shoulder, Agent Brown crossed his arms, giving Ian the same impassive look he’d worn for their entire acquaintance. When Ian met his eyes, he said, evenly, “Your mother still lives in Santa Grenda, does she not?”

Ian winced, slowly, deliberately, dramatically. "Ooh, well played, baldy!“ He couldn’t help the grin that split his face in two. Why had he been so afraid of these two? They were stupid! Short-sighted, mortal, and _stupid_! “But all the memories of near-omniscient knowledge in the world aren’t going to save you now."

He met Brown’s eyes across the rows of binding circles between them, never letting his smile drop. “Wanna know what your future has in it?”

Brown ignored Janice’s excited chatter beside him, her pulling out her tablet and pointing the camera at Ian. A muscle in his jaw worked, and Ian felt his own smile grow wider. This was so _easy_ , it was almost embarrassing.

He blinked, once, slowly, deliberately, and said, “Exactly three minutes!”

Brown flinched, and Ian smiled. Just like that. How had he wasted so much time trying to figure out how to use Brown’s fear against him, when he could have just been increasing it?

“Did you get that? Exact time and date of death! We’ve got a prediction, can we verify that somehow?” Janice yelled at her group of lab assistants, and Ian felt his smile slip. He swallowed, trying to regain his composure, but a crack had driven its way through the absolute confidence and calm that had enveloped him not even a minute earlier. What had just happened? What had he just -

Brown pressed two fingers to his earpiece again. “Tell me you’ve deployed protocol 767 - hello? Hello? Come in! Is anyone -”

His face went greenish under the ashy grey, and he turned, slowly, to look at Ian.

“Central security’s gone silent,” he said, quietly, and Janice stopped babbling to turn and stare at him.

“They took down central?”

“So it would seem.” Brown carefully removed his earpiece and set it on the ground in front of him. “We’re on our own.”

Janice looked pale herself for a moment, but recovered impressively. “Right. Right. We - we need to evacuate. Nothing’s going to stop Alcor if he decides he wants to come in, so we need to -”

“There’s another option,” Brown said, in that same quiet, perfectly even voice. He hadn’t looked away from Ian.

Janice followed his line of sight, and drew in a deep breath, shaking her head. “No. Nuh uh. Even I’m not that crazy. There’s nothing left, just memories -”

“You said you wanted to see what Cipher’s Name would do to him,” Brown said, and the rest of his words vanished into a buzz of meaningless noise. Ian tried to listen, a frantic thought telling him that what Brown had to say could be his only way out, but all he could think was a repeating loop of Janice’s words. _Heads like pinatas. Twelve city blocks._

 _Mira_.

This couldn’t be happening. This was some kind of, of, nightmare, this wasn’t really, this couldn’t really be -

“Ninety seconds!” one of the lab assistants said, not looking up from the countdown she’d brought up on one of the screens on the array on the wall.

Ian curled his hands into fists and then uncurled them, drumming his fingers against his leg as the lab assistants burst into a flurry of whispers and Brown froze dead-still in front of the circle. Ian didn’t want to know how he knew. He didn’t want to _think_ about what had happened to put that knowledge, chilly and permanent and unmistakeable, in the forefront of his brain. But that and nothing else kept spinning around in his head, terror and anticipation snarling together into a knot. Ninety - ooh, no, eighty-nine seconds until the end. Eighty-eight seconds until the doors burst open. Eighty-seven seconds until...

“Play it. _Now_.”

Janice clutched her tablet to her chest. “I don’t have a _deathwish_!”

“Then you’ll play it.” Brown’s implacable voice was starting to rise, and he kept glancing in Ian’s direction. Ian knew he was counting too. “It’s the only chance we have left.”

“Um, hello? Evacuation will probably not explode the heads of every single person in this building!”

“You said it yourself. The recording isn’t as powerful as the original. And if Alcor wants to come after us, nothing is going to stop him.” Brown was visibly distressed now, his bald head turning quickly redder. “The most we can do - _all_ we can do - is give ourselves a fighting chance.”

“And even if it worked and didn’t kill us all, then how are you proposing we control Cipher?”

Brown pointed towards the tablet. “We still have his Name.”

Janice took a step backwards, away from him. “You’re insane.”

“Thirty seconds!” the lab assistant helpfully supplied.

There was a chorus of gasps from the lab assistants as the floor shook, a low rumble that grew louder and louder.

Brown pushed back his suit jacket and whipped out a plasma pistol, aiming it with one hand at Janice’s head. His other hand shook as he held it out, but his aim was perfectly steady. “Now you’re going to die either way. _Play it_.”

Ian, despite himself, leaned forward, stopping only when the silver symbols of the inner ring started to glow red around him.

Janice was white as a sheet, but she still stood up perfectly straight and looked Brown directly in the eye. “I’m not going to let all this work, all these people -”

The rest of her sentence was swallowed by the electric whine of Brown’s plasma pistol discharging. The lab assistants shrieked as a fine red mist that had been her head sprayed over them, spattering the wall of screens.

Brown reached out and grabbed the tablet from the corpse’s arms as it toppled backwards. His eyes flicked to the countdown on the screen behind him as the seconds ticked away, vanishing with what seemed like ever-increasing speed. The rumble of the shaking floor was nearly unbearable now, a roar that nothing could be heard over.

Ian glanced over at the timer as Brown brandished the tablet. The last few seconds drained away just as Brown pressed a finger down on the screen.

The house from Ian’s nightmares crashed down around him.

He rose, slowly, through the floors, watching blue light beaming up through the floorboards as everything within the rickety walls shook off gravity. Everywhere he turned there were familiar things, moments from an impossibly long and vast memory flooding around him, bearing him up and out of the nightmare, out of the fear and the uncertainty and the confusion and the loneliness and out of the strange house that had plagued him for as long as he could remember. He rose, quickly, and as the blue light grew stronger below him and around him, he saw everything laid out below him, everything perfect and simple, and he finally, finally understood.

For the first time in his life, everything made _sense_.

He threw his head back, and he laughed.


	13. Chapter 13

Mira hadn’t said anything since they’d left the room where Henry’s soul had been imprisoned, and Dipper was starting to worry. He’d expected her to ask where he was leading her, how he knew where to go, what (though maybe this was his guilt talking) he’d done to Henry’s soul, but she’d been silent. And sure, it made it easier to concentrate on following the wireless signals the security cameras were projecting back to the control centre, where, he was sure, he’d also find the source of the wards that were hampering his omniscience - and a way to break them - but Dipper didn’t really need to concentrate. The power that he’d gained from - from eating Henry’s soul was still flooding through him and lighting up every supernatural sense like fireworks. He felt like he could rip this entire place straight out of the earth and launch it into space without breaking a sweat, and he probably could, too. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a feast like this, so much pain and fear and the power that came from breaking the unnatural bonds that had chained the soul to their previous life even after they’d been severed from it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this strong, this capable, this absolutely  _overflowing._ He could do whatever he wanted, and nothing and no one would be able to stop him.

It made Dipper want to throw up.

But there hadn’t been any other way. He’d done what he had to do to release the soul of someone he loved from a horrifying artificial limbo that had kept them in agony. And they’d wanted him to. Being  _eaten by a demon_  and torn apart into nothingness until they finally reformed centuries later had seemed better than staying as they were.

It didn’t make Dipper feel any less sick about how good it felt to finally have a soul between his teeth again, though.

When the silence finally got to be too much, he turned to Mira and asked, “Are you okay?”

Mira started, brandishing her bat as she snapped to attention, then lowering it again. “Ah! What?”

“You’ve been really quiet. Are you okay?”

Mira looked at him like he’d grown three heads, before turning back toward the hallway. After a long moment, long enough that Dipper started to think she wasn’t going to answer, she shrugged. “It’s just - how could anyone  _do_  that to someone? How could they -” She shook her head, looking back up at Dipper, the bloody soles of her sneakers squeaking faintly against the floor as she walked the only sound. “She was screaming. That whole time, she was screaming, and -”

Mira bit off the rest of her sentence, raising her bat and staring intensely down the hallway. “Did you hear something?”

Dipper gestured, and a fireball almost as tall as he was rolled down the hall, a couple of short screams echoing in its wake.

“Thanks,” Mira half-laughed, with a look that said clearly that it wasn’t funny at all. “See, at least  _we_  just kill people.”

They walked - well, Mira walked, Dipper floated - for a few more feet before Mira looked up at Dipper and asked, “Are  _you_  all right?” 

Dipper nearly skidded to a halt in midair. “What? Why? Why wouldn’t I be?”

Mira raised both hands, palms out. “Hey, chill! You’ve been really quiet too and sometimes you look like you’re going to punch the next person you see clear out of this dimension and you’re leaving a little trail of scorch marks spelling out rude words in the floor behind us.”

A physical projection of an incorporeal, extradimensional, metaphysical being made up of pure energy, which did not strictly have capillaries or veins or arteries or even technically a heart, Dipper thought, should not have been able to blush.  _Especially_  not involuntarily.

Mira, clearly noticing how red he was getting, turned her face politely away, though Dipper could still see the corners of her eyes crinkling upwards in a smile above her gas mask.

The silence, now, as they walked, at least felt a little more companionable. Until Mira broke it again.

“You never answered my question.”

Dipper shrugged, sharply. The signal leading to the security booth was getting clearer and easier to follow the nearer they drew, but he still poured all his concentration into following it around a corner and not the way Mira was looking at him.

“She seemed like she knew you,” Mira pressed, and Dipper ground his back teeth together.

“She didn’t.”

“She recognised you. She recognised me.” Mira was quiet for another blissful moment before she said, “ _She_  didn’t know you. Paloma didn’t. Someone before her did.”

Dipper bit down hard on his tongue to hold back a very impolite word. Mira had been hanging around him too long. “Henry. A long, long time ago.”

“Henry.” Mira said the name as though holding it up to the light, judging its quality and its authenticity. “And he knew m- Mizar?”

Dipper debated with himself for a silent second, torn between two possible futures he still couldn’t see clear endings to. But he’d said this much already. “You could say that.”

Mira gave him that look again, the one that said clearly that she saw right through him.

“Are you ever planning on telling me the truth? About Mizar?” she asked, and Dipper had to flap his wings once, hard, to keep himself in the air. 

“Yes! I was waiting -”

“Until I was old enough. I know. That’s what you’ve said every time I’ve asked. But I’m twenty-five now and it’s starting to look like a load of crap!”

“That’s not -”

“You just don’t take me seriously, isn’t that it? Or do you just forget - or  _want_  to forget - that I don’t know, because I’m not her?”

“I’m. A.  _Thousand!_ ” Dipper yelled, throwing his arms out in frustration and stopping dead when fire burst from his arms and wings and the echoes from the shout brought down part of the ceiling behind them. He and Mira both stared at it for a moment, before turning back to face each other.

“I’m a thousand years old,” Dipper repeated, nearly whispering this time. “You  _do_  seem too young to me, because you  _are_! You’re just -” He ran a hand up over his forehead and into his hair, digging his fingers into his scalp as he pressed the heel of his hand, hard, against the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “It’s like you’re just a kid, and I  _know_  it’s not true but that’s how it feels! And I don’t want -”

He stopped. Mira watched, patient, expecting, her arms crossed over her chest.

“I know...how important it is to you that you’re your own person.” Dipper swallowed, finding it strangely more difficult than usual. Stupid sense-memory, stupid physiological reactions, this stupid construct didn’t even have an  _esophagus_  - ! “I didn’t - I just don’t want you to feel like I’m comparing you to somebody you’re not. Or like I want you to be more like her.” He looked away, and some wretched little impulse made him add, “I guess that backfired.”

He couldn’t tell under her mask, but Dipper was pretty sure Mira was biting her lip.

“It’s not - like I don’t appreciate the thought,” she said, at last, the atmosphere around her as thick and wet and heavy as a damp blue towel. “But - I might not know who the first Mizar was, or how you met, or how you ended up in this weirdo cycle of reincarnations and souls, but I know exactly what she was like and what she was to you. Because you always let me know.”

Dipper felt himself bristle, a sick defensiveness welling up in the space where his lungs should be. “I never -”

“Oh, you never would have said anything. But - the way you react, the things that make you fly off the handle, the things that make you sad for no reason - I know you really loved her.” Mira had planted her feet apart, the same stance she took for physical fighting, and Dipper hovered backwards, away from her stare. “And I think maybe you  _want_  to see me as someone else, someone separate from her, and maybe you’ve even convinced yourself that you  _do_. But you still treat me like - like you’re expecting me to act like somebody I’m not. And you still get upset when I don’t.”

Dipper couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response.

“I just want to keep you safe,” he said, finally, after the silence had already gone on too long.

Mira laughed. “I  _know_  that. You told me that last time we had this conversation. Stars, you can be such a  _dad_  sometimes.”

“Hey!”

Mira laughed again, and thankfully, it was accompanied by a smile. She turned away, and started walking again. “You can’t even deny it. If I’m just like a kid, then you’re a fussy, overprotective dad.”

Dipper managed a laugh too as he followed her, but the bitter mix of defensiveness and defenselessness was still curdling in his stomach.

They’d taken out two more waves of guards (turning Mira’s bat temporarily into a flamethrower had been a stroke of genius, if he did say so himself) before he said, “I don’t...know what I’m doing to make you feel that way.”

Mira looked up at him, and he noticed there was a streak of blood across her forehead, and her neck had started to bruise. 

“I don’t know how to fix it,” Dipper admitted, feeling something clench inside of him at the words. It went against everything he was, everything he’d ever been, Alcor the omniscient and Dipper the smart guy. But...

The corners of Mira’s eyes crinkled upwards into a smile before she spun and unleashed hellfire on a guard who’d been unlucky enough to come between her and the doors to the security centre. Dipper gestured, and the doors buckled with a  _clunk_ , his power tugging them against the wards that held them closed.

“Just  _listen_  to me,” Mira said, over the roar of flames. There was a soft  _click_  as she turned the flamethrower off, and the hallway was quiet again. 

“I listen to you!” Dipper protested, giving another yank at the doors. They buckled outwards into a rough metallic cone with Dipper at its peak, but didn’t give way. 

“Not like -” Mira huffed, and brushed a stray hair out of her eyes. “I need you to believe that I know what I want and what I’m doing. That I can handle myself! I’m Mizar, for crying out loud! I eat entire evil cults for breakfast!”

Despite himself, Dipper snorted. Mira’s eyes narrowed, and she raised the flamethrower and let another gout of blue fire pour out, though there was something in the tilt of her chin and the lightening in her aura that told Dipper she was trying not to laugh.

“I know,” Dipper said, when he felt sure he wasn’t going to burst out laughing if he opened his mouth. “I know. I -” He cleared his throat, ignoring the small puff of blue flame that slipped out when he coughed. “I’ll think about what you said. But I need - you know I need you to listen to me too. Sometimes there are things you  _don’t_  know, and I - I really just want you to be safe, but I want you to be happy, too.”

“Thank you. And I’ll try to remember,” Mira said quietly, when Dipper didn’t say anything more. “But...” 

She glanced down at her shoes for a moment, before looking up and meeting his eyes. 

“You’re my best friend, you know? And I don’t want to lose that.” She glanced down the hall, back the way they’d come. “But if this is going to work, then sooner or later, you’re going to have to trust me.”

Dipper didn’t know what to say, so instead, he raised a hand, and pulled with all his power. With one final groan, the heavy steel doors tore free from the wall surrounding them, great chunks of concrete falling into the hall as the crumpled metal fell forward.

He watched Mira scramble over the wreckage, brandishing the flamethrower at another handful of guards and the people in office clothes they were protecting with obvious glee, and tried to tamp down the growing uneasy feeling that had taken root under his breastbone. 

_Trust her_? But he did trust her! He trusted her to have his back, to take care of cults, to be able to fight her way out of bad situations...

...but he hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her about Mabel. And he hadn’t trusted her judgement about Ian. He hadn’t trusted her to make that decision, and he hadn’t trusted her enough to give her a good reason why she should listen to his warnings.

If battling a hundred gnomes side-by-side with someone meant they’d probably always have your back, then what did battling a few thousand cultists side-by-side with someone mean?

“Alcor!” Mira shouted, and Dipper snapped abruptly out of his thoughts. She sounded panicked, and he blipped to her side and turned the people around her into pillars of ash before he realised she wasn’t in trouble. She was staring at one of the screens that lined the walls of the almost perfectly circular room, her eyes wide in fear and her aura strobing with terrified neon bruise-colours.

“What?” Dipper asked, then looked closer.

It wasn’t easy to tell at first, since the small screen was looking down on a very large room, but the reddish-haired figure in green plaid in the centre of what looked like the second- or third-most serious binding circle array that Dipper had ever encountered could only be one person. And arranged around him - 

Dipper muttered the worst curseword he could think of under his breath. A few screens shattered, spitting sparks, and Mira clapped both hands over her ears, wincing. “Would you please not mutter to yourself in the Dread Tongue of Unpronounceable when there are fragile humans in the room?”

“That’s - that’s Bill’s wheel,” Dipper said. He’d thought it would come out as a shout, but it slipped out instead, quiet and weak. The last time he’d seen those symbols, he’d thought he was dying. Sort of had been, too, if you only counted physical bodies. Only three people he knew of - in this dimension, anyway - had ever even seen the wheel - four, if you counted the one who was currently standing in the middle of it. “I tried to tell you a while ago, I was trying to take some of the residual memories so Ian wouldn’t have those recurring nightmares, but when I tried to dig them out of his subconscious,  _this_  showed up.”

Mira shook her head. “So it’s...a summoning circle? Some kind of seal?”

“Neither! Both! I don’t know!” Dipper bit down on his bottom lip. “I’ve never been able to figure it out, and  _yes_  I know I have all the knowledge in the cosmos at my fingertips, but if you go too deep you don’t find your way back out. At least, not the same you that went looking. And everything about Bill is...”

Dipper dug his fingers into his scalp, hoping the sharp scratch of claws would help ground him. “I - I don’t know what’s happening, but anything that has to do with Bill Cipher is bad news. And if his symbols are turning up in Ian’s head, and then  _here_  - I don’t know what that would do to Ian! I know what it did to  _me_! And see, this is what I meant when I said I was worried about him!”

Mira looked like she’d just been slapped. “I thought -”

“I know what you thought! But I don’t actually  _want_  to hate your boyfriend.” Dipper shook his head. “I wanted to be happy for you. I’ve been trying to make this work. But it hasn’t been easy for me either. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know  _why,_  and - I’m  _scared_ , okay?”

He bit his tongue at the way his voice turned into a croak on the last few words. He wished Mira would stop looking at him with that stupid kicked-puppy expression on her face.

“You’re never scared,” she said, finally, tugging at the hem of her skirt, her eyes still fixed on Dipper’s face.

“Well, I am now! Last time we faced Bill, I almost lost everyone who ever mattered to me, because I couldn’t see what he was planning until it was nearly too late.” Dipper waved both hands vaguely through the air. “I don’t think Ian would ever willingly hurt you. But I don’t. Trust. Bill Cipher!”

A few flakes of ash floated down around them.

“I’m sorry,” Mira said, in the silence. “I should’ve listened.”

“I didn’t really give you a reason to think I had anything to say worth listening to,” Dipper admitted, gripping his right arm in his left hand. He realized a few seconds later that he’d hunched his shoulders up protectively around his ears, and his wings had hunched with them, coming all the way up to block his peripheral vision.

Mira looked thoughtfully off to her right, towards the floor, for a moment before she glanced up to Dipper. “Make you a deal,” she said, and Dipper had to tamp down the electric jolt that ran through him at the last word. “You listen to me, and I’ll listen to you.”

Dipper smiled, relaxing both shoulders and wings, and was just starting to agree when Mira’s eyes fixed on something just over his shoulder and flicked wide. Dipper turned back to face the surveillance camera screen, just in time to see a glaring red timer on one of the screens in the room Ian was being held in tick down from “3:00:00” to “2:59:59”.

“What are they doing?” Mira demanded, and her voice had gone up nearly an octave in pitch, shaking with anger or maybe fear. “What is that for?”

Dipper concentrated, but as with every time before, something blocked his vision. And along with the wards that already sealed the building and its contents away from his knowledge, he now found himself ramming up against protective shields that had slammed into place all around the building when it had locked down. He could get through them, especially with the power from – from what he’d had to do earlier still coursing through him, but it would take time. And time was one of many things they didn’t have.

“I don’t know,” Dipper admitted, realizing as he did that he’d probably said those words more often in the last day than in the entire millennium previous.

Mira nodded, once, decisively, not taking her eyes off the screen. She whirled to face Dipper, and her voice and the look in her eyes were like cut glass. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, we’re going to stop it. Where are they?”

Instead of continuing to bash his head against a metaphysical wall, Dipper shut his eyes, and tried to focus on the wards that were keeping him from seeing instead. It was easier than he’d expected. He hadn’t been searching for more than a moment before the floor lit up, sigils of protection and surveillance and concealment glowing red-hot. Mira yelped and jumped sideways off of one.

“They’re built into the foundation!” Dipper said, opening his eyes to the physical dimension again. “No wonder their wards were so thorough!”

He reached out and, with the power he could still feel pressing against the bonds of the physical form he’d adopted and bleeding out through every dimension he brushed, grasped each of the sigils embedded into the underground building’s girders and concrete, baked into each cinderblock and painted under the flooring, and pulled.

The floor shook.

Dipper pulled again, gritting his teeth as magical feedback whined in his ears. Sigils strained, wards stretched thin, until finally,  _finally_ , they started to pop. The floor buckled upwards from the centre. Around them, screens danced and fell from the shaking walls, smashing against the girders that shot up through the floor.

Mira sucked in a horrified breath. Dipper thought for a moment that she was just startled by the juddering, shifting floor and the collapsing walls, until he glanced back at the screen just in time to see the headless body of a woman topple to the floor at the edge of the silver circle.

“Tell me they didn’t just make a blood sacrifice,” Mira said, tightly, reaching up to grab Dipper’s arm and pulling her hand away almost instantly with a hiss of pain. “We have to stop them. Right.  _Now_.”

“I’m  _working_  on it,” Dipper muttered, and gave another massive tug on the wards throughout the building.

It was like trying to pull a tree up by its roots when you could only hold onto the leaves. Dipper knew, with a sinking sort of feeling, that without the power from Henry’s soul, he would never have been able to do this. Well, maybe not  _never_ , but not for another few hundred years at least.

And another thread of fine, dreadful suspicion settled itself lightly over the sticky cobwebs of worry already drifting across his thoughts.

Dipper pulled until he felt the atoms of his physical construct start to peel away, stripped off by the sheer amount of power he was using, and he knew he was only seconds from losing his physical form entirely. He focused with all his vast and immeasurable being on the tightest cluster of protections he could find, letting his ersatz body dissolve to pour all his power and concentration into one final, impossible,  _yank_.

In the distance, somewhere in the depths of the honeycomb of a building, there was a muffled  _boom_  like a skyscraper crumpling down into a crater in a single instant.

The floodgates burst, and knowledge poured into Dipper’s mind, too late, too late to do anything but dive for Mira and grab her off the plane of physical existence before the rising sound of Bill Cipher’s true Name could reach them.

Even with the wards finally broken, trying to blip into the room where they’d seen Ian was like trying to push uphill through a river of tar. It didn’t help that Dipper was trying to take Mira along with him, though he suspected that, even without her, this wouldn’t have been any easier. A fair portion of the power from – from before had gone into trying to tear down the wards keeping him at bay, and he was quickly burning through the rest of it as he struggled to materialize them both just inside the wreckage of the blast doors.

The room they found themselves in was bigger than it had seemed on the tiny surveillance screen, nearly as long and as wide as a football field, the ceiling arching away overhead like a cathedral. When Dipper looked up, it was obscured by smoke, or possibly the thick, choking grey dust that rose from the shattered doors and jagged fissures in the floor and crumbling, fallen chunks of wall and ceiling. Silence lay over everything, thick and choking as the dust.

In the middle of all the wreckage, the silver circle, still pristine and untouched and thrumming with power, seemed even more sinister.

Beside Dipper, Mira ripped off her mask, clutching her mouth and her stomach as she bent over. She appeared to battle with her lunch for a few minutes before straightening up. Her light spell-armour flickered and sparked a few times as she gently nudged a pile of twisted steel and concrete with her toe, before finally giving up the ghost. With a dying whine, her shields vanished, and she thumped on her kneepads a few times before giving up with a groan. “That was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the single worst teleport I have ever experienced in my entire life. Wh – what happened here?”

“I did,” Dipper said shortly, following her line of sight over to a pair of polished black Oxford shoes buried under a long trail of rubble. “Well, I did the floor. And the ceiling. But the bodies are probably from the sound of someone trying to speak a demon’s Name.” He took a deep breath, steeling himself. “Mira, I think they were trying to -”

Mira gasped, cutting Dipper off before he could voice his swelling suspicion. “Ian!”

“Wait, I don’t know if -” Dipper started, but Mira had already thrown aside her mask and was running as fast as she could across the silver circle, sliding to a stop beside the figure lying sprawled in its centre. He didn’t think she even heard the words spilling out of her own mouth.

“No no no no no no  _no_!”

Dipper hovered cautiously towards the circle after her, looking around the room as he went. Somewhere in a floor above them, something rumbled; somewhere down the hall, a shattering crash sent bouncing echoes throughout the building. Without its stabilizing spells, the place was starting to fall in on itself, the walls collapsing even as the wards did.

He reached out with every otherworldly sense, scouring the room for any sign of Bill. But with the atomic echoes of Bill’s Name still shivering through everything and the row upon row of protective and binding sigils turning the air between Dipper and Ian to an invisible but impenetrable wall of magical haze, it was impossible to tell if anything had actually changed.

“Mira? I think maybe you should come back onto  _this_  side of the protective circles.”

Mira didn’t seem to have heard. She dropped to her knees, holding her hands up in front of her in an obvious agony of indecision for a moment before reaching down to grab Ian’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. His arm hung limp in her hand, and when Mira gently turned his face up towards the ceiling to listen for breathing, Dipper noticed a trickle of drying blood trailing from Ian’s ear and down along his neck.

Mira was almost chanting under her breath, a litany of ‘no’ and ‘come on’. “Mira?” Dipper asked, a hint of the uneasiness curdling in the place his stomach should be creeping into his voice, and Mira’s head shot up, panic clear on her face and her eyes shimmering.

“He was  _fine_  just a few seconds ago, we saw him, he was  _here_ , he can’t – we can’t – we can’t be too late!”

Dipper bit the inside of his lip, swallowing the warning he’d been about to give. The future was still whipping past almost too fast to follow, but it had begun to narrow, to streamline into a specific set of possibilities. And what little he could glimpse of each of them made fear jitter down his spine and through his aura in freezing arcs.

But Mira was afraid, and Mira was on the verge of losing someone she loved very much. Mira knew the risks already, better now than she had when Dipper had first tried to explain.

And Mira had asked him to trust her.

There was a sound, so soft that Dipper thought for a moment that he’d imagined it, and Ian’s face contorted, eyes screwing up behind the bloody ‘x’ that crossed out the right as he let out another soft groan.

Dipper had never heard Mira sound quite so relieved, or so excited. “Ian! Ohhhh stars you’re alive, you’re alive -”

She pulled him up into an enormous bear hug as soon as he blinked open his eyes, either not noticing or not caring about the wince he gave when she wrapped her arms around him. “Babe, I was so scared, I thought – I thought I was never going to see you again.”

Ian blinked, slowly, first his right eye and then the left. Both eyes roved around the room over Mira’s shoulder until they settled on Dipper, catching and holding his gaze for what felt like eons.

Then he smiled.

It was a smile Dipper had seen just once before, looking just as wrong on Ian’s face now as it had, nearly exactly a thousand years ago, on his own.

“GLAD TO SEE YOU TOO, SHOOTING STAR!” Ian’s mouth said, and Ian’s body twisted, reaching down to pull Mira’s knife free from its sheath as he spun her to face Dipper before pressing the blade to her throat.

There was a moment of pure, shocked silence.

“Mira!” Dipper shouted, throwing himself forward. The ring of protective spells crackled and spat gold lightning all around him, electricity tearing painful gashes through his adopted form and nearly severing the loose ties that bound his energy and consciousness. But despite it all, the ring gave slightly under his attack. Dipper pushed harder, trying to hold himself together after a particularly nasty zap, and the ring snapped back into place, throwing him out and into the wall behind him. He heard a crunch, and dust rained down into his eyes from the ceiling overhead.

From inside the circle, Dipper heard laughter. It was the same voice he’d come to recognize as Ian’s, the same wickedly delighted, awful nasal cackle he’d worked hard to disassociate from a millennium of hatred, but there was something indescribably  _wrong_  about it.

Dipper wished he didn’t know what that wrongness was.

“ _Bill_ ,” he growled, and the floor shook, more dust and a few chunks of concrete spilling from the ceiling and bouncing harmlessly away, Dipper noticed sourly, from the magic preserving the circle.

“THAT’S MY NAME, DON’T WEAR IT OUT!” Ian –  _Bill_  – said brightly, over Mira’s squeak of ‘ _What?!_ ’ “MISS ME, PINE TREE? OOOF COURSE YOU DID!”

“You ruined my life, Bill, of course I don’t miss you!” Dipper yelled, pushing himself to his feet and brushing concrete dust from his front. “Let Mira go!”

“SORRY, KID, NO CAN DO! AND OH! DOESN’T LOOK LIKE YOU’RE GONNA BE ABLE TO MAKE ME, EITHER!” Ia- no, it was  _Bill_ , it was really Bill Cipher now, looking out through those eyes and speaking with that mouth. It was  _Bill_  who canted the head that technically belonged to him to one side, looking at Dipper at an awkward, uncomfortable angle, before turning an annoyed glance down on Mira. “HEY! QUIT WRIGGLING, SHOOTING STAR, I’M GETTING TO YOU!”

Dipper was quietly glad that, for once, he wasn’t on the receiving end of the venomous glare Mira was wearing. He started forward toward the circle again as Bill hauled Mira to her feet, pushing up his sleeves as he gathered his reserves of energy to try again to punch through the protective rings. “It’s  _over_ , Bill. I don’t know why they brought you back, but in case you hadn’t noticed…”

Dipper let the last of the power from Henry’s soul loose to flood his manufactured form, a lazy smile crossing his face at the feeling of it, filling him up with golden invincibility and fizzling through the infinite knowledge tickling at the back of his brain. He felt his wings snap open, ripping through the fabric of dimensions, felt the illusion of humanity shred away from his form until nothing was left but the rough shape etched in starless void, the power bleeding through in golden lines. Felt his aura spreading throughout the vast room to press in around the silver circle, now seeming so small, a tiny island only momentarily protected in the eye of his storm.

Dipper took one step forward, ignoring the puff of flame as the first ring of protective spells tore like wet paper under the onslaught, and smiled with a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. “You’re human now.”

Bill didn’t move. And he didn’t stop grinning.

Dipper scowled, and took another step forward, the next ring of spells flaring and snapping around him. He had all the knowledge he could ever need on the tip of his tongue. The world was his to mold as he saw fit. Time itself would dance to his violin. But something had changed. In a single instant, with nothing but a smile, his upper hand had turned into an uncertain bluff.

“OH, I KNOW!” Bill said, without a trace of the fear he really should have been feeling in the face of Dipper’s full demonic wrath. “WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND! BUT ENOUGH SPINNING THE WHEEL AND TAKING OUR CHANCES! WE’RE PLAYING A DIFFERENT GAME THIS TIME, AND THIS -” He twisted Mira’s arm behind her back, and she gave a short, sobbing gasp. “IS CHECKMATE!”

“You planned this,” Dipper said, or thought he said. It felt like all the air had been punched out of him, and he couldn’t quite muster enough to make audible words.

Bill rolled his eyes. “WOW, PINE TREE, AND I ACTUALLY THOUGHT YOU WERE SMART! WELL, LESS STUPID THAN THE AVERAGE MEATBAG, ANYWAY! OF COURSE I PLANNED THIS! YOU DON’T HONESTLY THINK I SUFFERED THROUGH TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PATHETIC, ITCHY, SMELLY, LUMPY,  _MORTAL_  MISERY FOR NO REASON, DO YOU?” He grimaced. “AND PUBERTY! REMIND ME TO GIVE THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS THAT DREAMED  _THAT_  ONE UP A SWIFT KICK IN THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST!”

“But…why?” Dipper managed, though it still came out whispery and small.

“WHY? YOU’RE SERIOUSLY ASKING ME WHY? SHEESH, KID! LEARN TO THINK LONG-TERM!” Bill shook his head, shooting Dipper a disappointed frown, though the glint in his eye said loud and clear that he was loving every second that he got to watch Dipper squirm.

“But – but we killed you! We  _beat_  you!”

The laughter that echoed through the cavernous room was like a lance through Dipper’s head. “HAH! YEAH, YOU BEAT ME! BET YOU STILL THINK I BOTCHED THE POSSESSION THAT GAVE YOU THAT UPGRADE, TOO! OH, KID, YOU’RE A RIOT!” Bill reached up to brush an imaginary tear from his cheek, his smile turning predatory as he turned back to meet Dipper’s eyes. “FACE IT, PINE TREE! YOU’VE PLAYED STRAIGHT INTO MY HANDS EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU EVER TRIED TO STOP ME.” His voice dropped to an almost conversational pitch, the knife bobbing as though forgotten in his hand. “YOU MIGHT HAVE KILLED ME, BUT YOU’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO BEAT ME!”

Dipper tried to cling to his anger, his sense of betrayal, but it was crumbling almost as quickly as his all-powerful demonic façade. He had enough perspective now, now that it was too late, to see how every move he’d made since Ian had come into his life had played straight towards this ending. Bill had even managed to use Dipper’s own caution against him, to isolate him from the only person he had left, to shut his mouth when he could have stopped all of this in its tracks. And Dipper had fallen for it, every single time. Every step of the way, he’d been one step behind.

How could he have been so – so gullible? So blind? So  _stupid_?

“HEY, CHIN UP, PINE TREE! IT’S NOT LIKE I JUST SHATTERED THE SOLE ILLUSION THAT KEPT YOU EVEN SLIGHTLY SANE OVER THE LAST THOUSAND YEARS! OH, WAIT. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I -”

Bill’s taunt was cut abruptly short with a  _whouf_  of expelled air. Dipper dared to look up, just in time to see Mira give Ia-  _Bill_  another vicious kick, twisting out of his grip as he doubled over.

“ _WOW,_  THAT HURTS MORE WHEN THEY’RE YOURS!” he gasped, as Mira grabbed her bat from its holster on her back and brandished it, crackling with purple lightning.

“Mira, run!” Dipper yelled, clawing desperately at the shield of protective enchantments between them.

Mira didn’t seem to hear him. She levelled her bat at Ian -  _Bill’s_  face, her own set with a grim fury Dipper had never seen her wear before.

“CAREFUL THERE, SHOOTING STAR!” Bill half-laughed, half-wheezed, straightening up slowly. “DON’T WANNA BREAK YOUR BOYFRIEND!”

Dipper saw Mira’s jaw clench as she ground her teeth together, and even through the haze of the protective circles, he could feel the heat of her anger roll over him as she raised her bat. “Give Ian back, you son of a -”

“AH AH AH, LANGUAGE!” Bill interrupted, with a wink. “TRYING TO PRESERVE THAT Y-7 RATING HERE!”

“Give Ian back,” Mira repeated, “or I will hit you. And it will hurt.”

Bill opened his mouth to make some other jeering comment, and froze. A spark of almost painful, choking hope lit Dipper’s chest at the way his eyes widened and the smile slipped from his face.

“Mira?” Ian’s voice said, from Ian’s mouth, sounding small and scared and on the edge of breaking.

Mira’s grip on the bat tightened, but she looked suddenly uncertain. “Babe...?”

“Don’t!” Dipper yelled, as Mira took a cautious step forwards. “He’s lying, that’s not -”

“Mira, listen to him -” Ian’s voice started to say, as Mira took another step towards him and reached out. What she intended to do, though, Dipper didn’t get a chance to find out. Ian’s arm shot out and wrapped around her wrist, pulling her forward off her feet and throwing her to the ground.

Dipper’s frantic shout mingled with the echoing sound of Bill’s harsh, mocking laughter. “A HAHAHAHA! YOU SHOULD’VE SEEN YOUR FACE! THAT ONE NEVER GETS OLD!” He knelt down on Mira’s back as she tried to push herself up, casually leaning all his weight on one knee between her shoulders. “AND THE BEST PART IS THAT LITERALLY EVERYONE FALLS FOR IT! GET THE RIGHT CHEMICAL STEW GOING IN SOMEBODY’S HEAD AND THEY’RE HELPLESS! YOU’LL OVERLOOK THE MOST  _PAINFULLY_  OBVIOUS TRAP IF SOMEBODY YOU LOVE IS THE BAIT!”

“Mira!” Dipper shouted again, digging claws into the third ring of protection and ignoring the numbness, the pain and the growing sense of nonexistence, that raced up his arms from the sparking points of contact.

“THEY SAY LOVE IS BLIND,” Bill went on conversationally, waving Mira’s knife absently through the air, “BUT REALLY, IT’S JUST BLINDING! AND YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THE ONE-EYED MAN IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND!”

“Do you...” Mira gasped, pushing herself up just enough to twist and glare at Bill. “Do you ever...stop...talking?”

“NOPE!” Bill chirped, leaning forward to press down on the back of Mira’s head, driving her face into the floor as he spun the knife between his fingers and gave her a considering look. “NOW, WHAT TO CUT OFF FIR- OW!” The knife clattered between his fingers and down to the floor. Bill shot it a nasty glare, the too-broad smile returning as blood began to well between his fingers. “HAHA, OOPS! GOOD THING I DON’T NEED ALL TEN OF THOSE!”

“Stop!” Mira shouted, her voice hoarse and muffled against the floor. “Don’t hurt him!”

There was a moment of stunned silence, during which Bill stared, apparently nonplussed, at the girl he was practically sitting on, and Dipper managed to force his hands through the rip he’d made in the protective circle and tear it open. The symbols hissed as the silver paint making them up melted, and Dipper realised he couldn’t feel his arms to the elbow, but he couldn’t help but smile. Only four more to go.

His moment of optimism was abruptly cut short, again, by Bill’s ringing laughter. “OH! OH, SHOOTING STAR, YOU ARE  _PRICELESS!_  YOU REALLY STILL THINK THAT LOSER IS COMING  _BACK_?”

His eyes narrowed, and his grin widened, as he grabbed one of Mira’s buns and yanked her head back, leaning over to stare, upside-down, into her face. “IAN BEALE WAS NOTHING BUT A VENTRILOQUIST’S DUMMY WHO THOUGHT HE WAS A REAL BOY!” Something flickered along the line of his shoulders and in what little of his face that Dipper could see, bent over as he was, the smile slipping away and eyes widening in something that looked almost like the first, dawning light of horror.

Then it was gone, like it had never been there, Bill’s too-wide smile firmly back in place as he renewed his grip on Mira’s knife. “GUESS HE FORGOT WHO WAS DOING THE TALKING! HAHAHA! I’VE BEEN PULLING THE STRINGS SINCE THE MOMENT HE LAID EYES ON YOU!”

He straightened up, pressing the knife to Mira’s throat again, her head still held back like an offering. Fear and rage flooded Dipper with icy heat, but instead of tearing into the next ring separating him from Mira and the - the  _demon_  he’d been stupid enough to trust, Dipper paused, hanging back and forcing himself to see the bigger picture. The future was still kaleidoscoping crazily past, but for the first time Dipper really thought about what that must mean. What was happening right now was important, could decide the entire future, but it also meant that things weren’t certain yet. Whatever Bill was planning, right  _now_ , Dipper had a chance to change it.

What had Bill said? _“You’ve played straight into my hands every single time you ever tried to stop me.”_

Dipper tuned out the taunt that Bill was shouting at Mira, something about nose boops not saving her now, and, for the first time, really looked at the circles he was pouring all his energy into ripping apart.

_Pulling the strings..._

Dipper’s head snapped up, fixing Bill with a piercing look. “You can’t get out, can you?”

For a single instant, Bill froze perfectly in place. Dipper could imagine the smile on his face turning rictus, shrinking from his eyes, before he relaxed lazily and spun to face Dipper as though he didn’t have a care in the world. But Dipper knew, with a swell of confidence, that he’d figured it out.

“WELL, LOOK WHO’S CLEVER!” Bill said, and though his smile didn’t change, Dipper could hear an undercurrent of fury in his voice. “HOW’D YOU DEDUCE THAT ONE?”

 -  _a foot stamping down on the lid of a laptop, smashing it -_

“If you’d wanted to hurt Mira, you would’ve done it already,” Dipper said, bobbing up a little further off the floor, buoyed by his own success. “And you just can’t resist bragging, can you? ‘Literally everyone falls for it’? Could you possibly be more obvious?”

There it was again. Bill’s expression definitely flickered, a fraction of a second of pure fury contorting his face. And just before his smile snapped back into its usual megawatt shape, Dipper knew he caught a glimpse of fear - or maybe hope - in Bill’s now all-too-humanly-expressive eyes. Bill might know everything he needed to know about reading people through body language, but that didn’t mean, new as he was to having his own, human body, that he knew anything at all about controlling it. 

“You’re trapped,” Dipper said, knowing as he said it that it was true. “You used me because you don’t have the power to break out on your own. You don’t have any power at all. And you know what?” Dipper couldn’t help the smile that broke across his face. “I don’t think you even have a plan.”

As soon as the last word left his mouth, Dipper knew he’d made a mistake. The strained edge to Bill’s smile vanished, and there was a glint of pure, malicious glee in his eye for the fraction of a second before he twisted his expression into one of apocalyptic fury. “ _NOW?!_ A THOUSAND YEARS WITH ALL OF  _MY_  POWER AND KNOWLEDGE AND YOU CLUE IN  _NOW_?!” He took a deep breath, trying out an assortment of grins that shattered into scowls, before finding a smug, sly one that Dipper didn’t like at all.  “GUESS YOU’RE NOT QUITE AS DUMB AS YOU LOOK! BUT IT’S STILL TOO LATE.”

There was another strange flicker in Bill’s expression and demeanour as he bounced to his feet and pulled Mira after him, one hand jamming the knife up under her jaw while the other hauled her bodily upright by one arm. The flicker was longer this time, almost a full second in which his smile slipped away, something other than malice filling his gaze. Then it was over again, like Dipper had only imagined it, replaced by that hateful smile and leaving Dipper wondering what crucial piece of the puzzle he’d overlooked.

“YOU’RE STILL TOO HUMAN TO LET ME KILL SHOOTING STAR HERE!” Bill said, brightly, holding Dipper’s gaze even as he dug the knife into the soft flesh under Mira’s jaw, ignoring her gasp. “EVEN THOUGH SHE’LL JUST COME BACK AROUND! EVEN THOUGH YOU’LL STILL  _OWN_  HER WHEN SHE DOES! YOU’LL STILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO SAVE HER, EVEN WHEN YOU KNOW IT’S A TRAP! YOU’RE STILL TOO HUMAN TO LET HER DIE!”

He didn’t take his eyes from Dipper’s face as he said, slowly, drawing each syllable out like torture. 

“AREN’T YOU?”

Dipper couldn’t move. Panic stabbed down through him like knives in his blood, and the smell of burning and the ozone odour of magic stung his nostrils as the room dissolved around him, replaced by red sky and burning pines. Power and flesh melted away, showing Bill in his - not quite true, but truer - form, triangular and crumbling and reaching out for Mabel, and Dipper’s twelve-year-old legs burned with the exertion and his lungs screamed in agony as he ran and dove forward, throwing his sister aside - 

It was like a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds. Everything aligned, like a constellation seen from just the right angle, people, places, the wheel of symbols on the floor, the bodies littering the room and the carefully-laid spellwork crumbling all around them...

_Sheesh, kid, learn to think long-term!_

“Human!” Dipper shouted, pointing an accusing finger at Bill, who blinked back at him with Ian’s eyes. “You let yourself get killed so you could come back  _human_! So you could -”

He stopped, ignoring Mira’s confused and angry stare, Bill’s frozen smile. “So you could be tied to the physical world. So you could have as much power on this plane as you did in the mindscape. So you could be like -”

Dipper’s wings gave an involuntary flap, carrying him backwards away from Bill and Mira and the circle he now recognised as a trap. “Like me.”

“What?” Mira asked, her eyes darting from Dipper to a spot up in the top left corner of her vision which was probably her way of trying to get another glimpse of Bill’s face. “Oh, what’s going on  _now_?”

Dipper flailed his arms, as the realisation washed over him. “Oh my god,  _seriously_? I was your  _guinea pig!?”_

“HM, LET’S SEE! DUMB, PUNY, USELESS, ADORABLE, TOTALLY INCAPABLE OF COMPREHENDING THE MOTIVES OR ACTIONS OF THE GODLIKE BEINGS THAT GOVERN THEIR VERY EXISTENCE...YEP! YOU WERE MY GUINEA PIG!” Bill’s eyes narrowed, and there was a vicious edge to his usual gloating, overly-cheerful tone. “BUT THE EXPERIMENT’S OVER! I’VE GOT THINGS TO DO, PEOPLE TO BE, OVERGROWN, OVERBLOWN INFANTS TO PUNCH IN THE FACE...”

“What makes you think I’m getting anywhere  _near_  that circle now that I know what you’re planning?” Dipper asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

Bill gave him a flat, blank look, and jabbed Mira with the knife. Blood spilled over his hand and down his arm, a single glistening trail, as Mira sucked in a sharp, pained breath and shot Dipper a smile that looked more like a grimace. “Don’t...don’t worry about me,” she gasped out, before Bill reached up and clapped a hand over her mouth.

“WHAT’LL IT BE, PINE TREE?” Bill’s manic grin was like a cold hand slowly squeezing Dipper’s insides. “SHOOTING STAR OR THE WORLD?”

His triumphant moment didn’t last long, though, his smile vanishing as he ripped his hand away from Mira’s mouth, hissing in pain. “OW! WHAT THE -”

Mira raised her head a little farther, craning her neck to smirk up at Bill as best she could around the knife. “Why does everyone keep forgetting I’m  _Mizar_?”

The look of dawning realisation on Bill’s face in the split second before Mira stepped backwards onto his foot and rammed the back of her head into his face was possibly the most beautiful thing Dipper had seen in his entire thousand-and-twelve (going on thirteen) years.Bill stumbled back, clutching his nose, his rapidly-tearing eyes wide with fury - and, for just an instant, before it was buried, a hint of relief.

Mira must have seen it too, because she stopped in the middle of crouching to grab her bat, and straightened up slowly, watching Bill’s face.

“Mira, get out of there!” Dipper shouted, but Mira ignored him, taking a step forward despite the hateful glare Bill focused on her over the hands he held clasped over his nose. 

“You weren’t ever going to kill me,” Mira said, with quiet surprise in her voice. “You  _can’t.”_

Bill only managed a twitching approximation of his usual grin. “LET’S PUT THAT THEORY TO THE TEST!”

“You can’t,” Mira repeated, with growing confidence, as she took another step forward.

“ _Mira!”_ Dipper yelled, throwing himself at the barrier between them again. Maybe it was a trap, but he wasn’t about to just abandon her.

“This isn’t your body. This isn’t your life!” Mira’s voice rose as she took another step towards Bill. Her knuckles went white on the handle of her bat, but she didn’t raise it, letting it swing from one hand at her side as she approached. “You’re nothing but an echo! You’re just a shadow of a memory that’s stolen everything you have!”

“WRONG!” Bill’s voice was more nasal than usual, blood flowing freely from his nose when he pulled a hand away to point an accusing finger - and the knife - at Mira. “THAT - THAT  _WEAKLING_  WAS NOTHING! JUST A PUPPET! FACE IT, SHOOTING STAR, THIS IS WHO YOU REALLY CHOSE!” He managed a pained imitation of an smile as he added, “YOUR TASTE IN MEN IS LEGENDARILY TERRIBLE!”

Mira looked at him, canting her head to one side, and though her back was mostly turned to him, Dipper could easily imagine the expression she must be wearing, a mixture of pity and disbelief at the other’s stupidity that Dipper had had turned in his own direction all too many times.

“Ian, I know you’re in there,” she said, and Bill’s grin dropped away, fear flashing across his bloodied face for an instant before he bared his teeth in a snarl, lunging for Mira.

“FINE! WE’LL DO THIS THE HARD WAY!”

Mira danced back out of his reach. “And I know you’re fighting whatever did this to you!”

“HE’S  _GONE_ , SHOOTING STAR!”

“Mira,  _please_ , get out of there!” Dipper begged, watching with his hands pressed against the wall of magic keeping them apart, ignoring the not-quite-pain of its attempts to throw him back. There was no way he was going to make it through four more circles of carefully woven protection and binding targeted specifically to Bill’s - and, unfortunately, his own - demonic energy before Bill had the chance to do something awful to Mira. There had to be something else he could do, something - 

Dipper’s eyes fell on the shooting star symbol painted on the floor just by Mira’s shifting feet, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach even as an idea took shape in his head.

“You can beat it! I know you can. I love you, and I know you love me. And you would never, ever hurt me.” Mira stopped, still, turning to face Bill, who stood frozen, his grip on Mira’s knife tight enough that Dipper wondered if he was going to leave fingermarks in the handle. If Dipper looked closely, he could tell that Bill was vibrating with tension, expression unreadable.

She’d hate him. She’d never forgive him. But she’d be  _alive_  to do it, and somehow that felt like enough.

Dipper reached out and took hold of the link that chained Mira’s soul to him, ready to force her to run back to him and out of the protective circles, just as Mira opened her hand and let her bat clatter to the floor. Its ringing, metallic echo struck like a church bell in the cavernous room.

Dipper saw Mira flinch, knew she was feeling his grasp on her soul, but she didn’t back down. Her eyes never left Bill’s - Ian’s? - face as she said, without a trace of hesitation or uncertainty, “I trust you.”

Dipper gave one last, weak, clutch at their link, before sighing, and letting go.

The echoes of the dropped bat died slowly away.

Dipper wasn’t sure, at first, what he was hearing rising in its place. Then, with a feeling like an ice cube slithering down his back, he realised it was laughter.

Bill’s sides were shaking, his familiar loathsome smile splitting his stolen face as he threw back his head and cackled. He flicked an imaginary tear away from one eye, smearing blood across his cheek, as he looked back at Mira, who hadn’t moved.

“TWINKLE, TWINKLE, SHOOTING STAR,” he sing-songed, raising Mira’s knife, “YOU DON’T KNOW HOW WRONG YOU ARE.”

Mira squeezed her eyes shut and stiffened as the knife flashed down.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, once again, I wrote more than I thought I would. I should really just start adding one chapter to my estimate of how long each of my fics is gonna be.
> 
> Warning for gore/eye trauma/slight body horror, discussion of suicide, and pure, unadulterated, edible cheese product.

Blood spattered, bright and glittering, across the symbol wheel.

Mira took a deep, shuddering breath, and slowly reached up to brush her fingers across the stinging, shallow cut across her left cheek. 

She took a quick inventory. Air still pumping in and out of her lungs, heart still battering against the cage of her ribs, feeling slowly seeping back into her limbs and a strange, giddy lightness flooding her head. Her throat ached and her abdominal muscles burned, and the blood on her neck was starting to dry, turning tacky and stiff, the blood on her cheek warm as it trickled downwards.

She was alive. And, for the shortest possible fragment of a second, before the strangeness took him over again, she  _knew_ Ian's eyes darted to the cut he'd made on her cheek and welled up with horror.

For a moment, her thoughts flickered back to the first disastrous time they'd tried to cook a real, homemade meal together, the wicked slice Ian had somehow managed to give her finger in between his chopping onions and her frying them. She could remember clearly the look of shock that had bloomed on his face when they both saw the blood, and how carefully, how tenderly he'd held her hand as he'd gently washed the cut and wrapped a bandage around it. How somewhere in his chorus of apologies, he'd managed to sneak in a joke about the kind of damage he could do with a spatula.

"WHAT?" the - whatever was wearing Ian's body, the demon,  _Bill_  - hissed between his teeth, and a laugh bubbled up out of Mira's mouth, shaky with fading adrenaline.

"I knew it!" Something - maybe just the giddy, heady knowledge that she was still alive - gave Mira boldness enough to laugh directly in the demon's face. "You can't lay a finger on me!"

" _NO.”_ The demon's voice was flat and furious, for just an instant before his face contorted, panic racing across familiar features as Ian took a stumbling step back, only to lunge snarling at Mira again seconds later. "LOVE IS JUST A CHEMICAL SOUP! IT CAN'T!  _DO_!  _THIS_! TO ME!"

"You wanted to be human, Bill," Alcor's voice said, from a little to Mira's left, and she half-turned to see him hovering at the edge of the binding array, arms crossed and wings flaring threateningly despite the smirk on his face. "You got it. Chemical soup and all."

"I AM NOT -" the demon started to shout, but stopped, shaking his head as he backed away. “No, no, no no no I can’t -”

“Ian?” Mira asked, taking an apprehensive step forwards, and Ian clapped both hands over his ears, his eyes screwed shut as he hunched in on himself.

“No, I don’t want, I don’t want to -”

Mira took another step, reaching out, and gently rested her right hand on Ian’s shoulder. He flinched backwards, looking up at her with both eyes wide, the white visible all around the blue.

Despite everything, Mira felt the last of her fear melt away into nothing. Those were Ian’s eyes, that was her boyfriend behind them, and she knew, she  _knew_ , that everything was going to be all right.

She reached up, as slowly as she dared, and placed her left hand over Ian’s right, over the knife he still held clutched like some kind of talisman. Before she could start to work it out of his grip, though, his fingers tightened on the handle, and Mira could feel him shake through the hand still resting on his shoulder. “Ian -” she started, and he pulled sharply back, slapping her hand away.  

“ _NO!_  I’VE WORKED TOO HARD FOR THIS! I’VE WAITED LONGER THAN YOUR PUNY MORTAL MINDS COULD EVEN  _BEGIN_  TO COMPREHEND! I AM  _NOT_  LOSING  _NOW_ TO A COUPLE OF  _PAWNS_!”

Alcor tapped a gloved finger against his chin, looking up thoughtfully towards the ceiling. “Hey Bill, tell me, do they still call it a pawn after it crosses the board?”

The demon stopped, its eyes narrowing as it glared at Alcor. “LAUGH IT UP, PINE TREE! THIS ISN’T OVER! AFTER ALL, THE ONLY THING KEEPING ME FROM MY POWERS IS A FRAGILE NEUROLOGICAL ATTACHMENT TO ANOTHER HUMAN! AND...” 

It turned Ian’s head, slowly, deliberately, to face Mira, that unnerving grin crossing its face as it met her gaze. 

"ANYTHING HUMAN BREAKS EVENTUALLY!”

Mira stared back into the teeth of that smile, the familiar eyes that she barely recognised, and took a deep breath. And a step forward.

“WAIT. WHAT. WHAT ARE YOU - HEY!” The demon tried to pull away as Mira reached up, but she caught the front of Ian’s flannel shirt, fists curling in the soft, worn fabric and pulling. For a moment, she met resistance, but it wasn’t more than a few seconds before her gentle but persistent tug did its job. Ian’s face tilted towards hers, and Mira took a deep breath at the look in his eyes, the hate glaring down at her. 

She shut her eyes, forcing herself not to think about the knife still gripped tight in his hand, not to think about the way the blue of his eyes burned behind the blood smeared across most of his face, about the grin that was less a grin and more bared teeth. She thought about warm hands in hers, arms wrapped around her, odd jokes on sticky notes stuck to the bathroom mirror in the morning, gentle fingers carding through her hair, a quiet, distracted hum to the strains of jazz piano or a jaunty whistle to a lively fiddle tune, the smell of flannel fuzz and deodorant and graphite, and she leaned forward and rested her forehead against his.

"Come back," she whispered, before she tilted her head up and pressed her lips against Ian’s.

Ian let out a shaky breath, hot as it brushed across her cheek. He reached a hand up, slowly, carefully, to cup the back of her head as they stood, together, leaning into one another. And, for one perfect instant, he kissed her back.

And then something yanked, hard, at the back of her head. Mira yelped in sudden pain, and Ian - no, not Ian, Ian would never do this - gave another sharp tug on one of her buns. Mira’s vision blurred as her head was forced back, exposing her throat, and the thought  _are you serious not again_  flickered through her mind before a glimpse of the expression on Ian’s face drove out every thought that wasn’t terror.

“YOU - LITTLE -” the demon forced out between gritted teeth, and Mira realised dreamily that Alcor was shouting something, something she couldn’t quite make out. The furious scowl on Ian’s face twisted up into a smile, a smile that was somehow more frightening than the blade of the knife that he pressed against the cut on her cheek, opening it up again with a short, sharp sting.

“MAYBE I CAN’T KILL YOU, SHOOTING STAR,” the demon said, and its breath was hot against Mira’s exposed neck, “BUT IT SURE LOOKS LIKE I CAN HURT YOU -”

He stopped. Something crossed his face, almost too quick for Mira to follow, a flurry of grimaces, and the fist clenched in her hair spasmed, the knife jittering dangerously close to her eye. She watched it with a kind of fascinated horror, wondering every second if it would be her last with sight. The blade sparkled dully under its coating of drying blood as it twisted in Ian’s shaking hand.

“No,” Ian said, in a whisper. “No, I don’t want this, I don’t...”

He scowled, and his grip suddenly steadied, giving another sharp yank on Mira’s hair. Her scalp burned, and she gasped, biting her tongue at the sound of the horrible giggle that rose out of Ian’s throat. It cut out, abruptly, then started again, dying in sputtering fits.

“But no more uncertainty,” Mira heard Ian say, to himself, and she clenched her fist tighter into the fabric of his shirt and shut her eyes. “No more fear..." 

Mira heard him suck in a breath, and opened her eyes just as he drew the knife away from her cheek. Ian stared down into her eyes, and it was so unlike the last time she’d made eye contact with him, only moments before, that it made it suddenly hard to catch her breath. She knew that look, knew what it meant like she knew the ending of every one of her own stories.

Ian was scared.

“You can do this, babe,” she whispered, and Ian started. Mira carefully uncurled the fingers of her right hand from where they were clenched in Ian’s shirt, feeling the stiffness curling them into claws as she reached up to cup Ian’s face. “I love you. I trust you.”

Every word that came out of Ian’s mouth sounded like it was struggling to escape. “You...shouldn’t. I...can’t...” He took a deep breath, let it out slow and shuddering, letting go of his grip on her bun to gently trace his thumb over the cut on her cheek and through the blood welling up from it. "It'd be so easy..."

"You aren't him. You don't have to -"

"No more mortality. No more worrying about time." Ian leaned forward, resting his forehead against Mira's again, and she felt her spine turn to ice at the sight of his smile, soft and aching. "No more emptiness, no more being...pointless... There was always a plan, and I was always part of it...always at the centre, pulling all the strings..."

"You. Were. A.  _Pawn_!" Mira yelled, reaching up to grab both sides of her boyfriend's face and push him back to stare directly into his eyes, into the slightly glazed expression over the blue. "Weren't you listening to yourself? You were a puppet to your own past!"

A scowl flickered across Ian's face, twisting into a thoughtful frown, before his usual crooked smile broke across it. "No, silly! That was me! It was all me. It's all...me." He frowned again, the same sort of frown he got when he was trying to work out a particularly puzzling crossword clue. "No, that's not quite..."

"Ian Thomas Beale! You are twenty-five years old! You were born and raised in Santa Grenda, New California! You met your best friend Rosa Darling in kindergarten! Your father died of liver failure when you were eleven! You spent four years in an animation course at NuCal because you thought there could be more to animation than whip cracks and fancy holographics! You  _never_  remember to put your dirty shirts in the laundry bin! You drew a smiley face on my pancakes with whipped cream last week when we went out for breakfast! When you get drunk you sing really old Irish folk songs even though I'm pretty sure the closest you've ever been to Ireland is the Federation Islands!" Mira squeezed Ian's cheeks, hard, giving his head a soft shake, like maybe she could rattle things back into place. "And you love me. You made a promise that you'd never hurt me. Anything that says otherwise is just - just leftovers!"

"Rosa. Rosa, Rosa..." Ian snapped his fingers. "The dummy! Hoo boy, that one took a lot of doing! Stringing her along was harder than getting you into place, Star...Star..." He stopped, pulling away from Mira to give his head a shake. "Doesn't matter. It's all back! It's all in place! Just like it was supposed to be! And I'm never - never going to be  _anyone's_  puppet, ever -  _ever_  -"

Ian's right eye twitched, his smile freezing into a frightening rictus before vanishing. "Ever again," he said, softly, looking down at the knife in his hand.

It was like a wave of icewater crashed over her head. Mira threw herself forward, but Ian was faster, pushing her away and dancing back across the circle. Mira, already off-balance, fell backwards, scrambling back up almost the instant she hit the floor.

She wasn’t fast enough. She got to her feet just in time to see Ian’s apologetic stare screw up into a grimace as he plunged her knife into his right eye.

The scream that ripped out of him was the worst thing Mira had ever heard, and she knew it would be in her nightmares for as long as she lived. Agony mingled with thwarted fury, too loud and too long to be really human, rattling the circle around them and sending puffs of dust down from the ceiling. It went on after Ian dropped to his knees, after Mira threw herself across the circle and caught him before he could fall any further, echoing around the hall. Faint reverberations still stirred the concrete dust around them as she tried to work out how to put pressure on the wound, to staunch the blood flowing down over Ian’s cheek and nearly obliterating the red X over his injured eye, without driving the knife further in, without pulling it out and making the damage worse.

“Alcor!” she yelled, her voice raw as she tried to keep Ian from falling forward, slumped across her like a rag doll. “Alcor, help me!”

“I - I can’t get through! The circles -”

Ian’s blood was slick and hot on Mira’s hands and he was slipping through her grasp, and -

"Don't worry," Ian said, faintly, into Mira's shoulder, sounding drunk and slightly slurred. "Never...gonna...hurt you."

The name tripped on her tongue, like she’d forgotten the familiar word halfway through, consonants and vowels eliding into something that still, somehow, seemed to fit like a familiar refrain in her mouth. "Dipper!  _Help!”_

She could  _hear_  Alcor pause, the whole room going hushed, a sudden stillness descending. Silence fell like a blanket, too thick and smothering to be natural, and the air hummed and tingled around her, a sudden smell of ozone and tin seeping into each breath. Mira counted seconds on her own breaths, one, two, in out, her heartbeat drumming against her ears.

The rumble started somewhere overhead, this time, and somewhere below, enveloping them in a rising bubble of sound. The floor shook, and Mira felt it start to give way under her feet, even as the ceiling overhead cracked and split, revealing a patch of blinding blue somewhere far overhead.

The silver lines and sigils flashed, one by one, and burned like tiny fireworks, leaving only blackened traces. Through them, Alcor floated towards her, a corona of golden light surrounding him from wingtip to outstretched wingtip. Lightning crackled against it from each of the binding circles as he passed and earthed itself into the shaking, rumbling floor. Mira felt him approach as much as she saw it, felt the air go taut and charged around her. He leaned down to rest a hand on the small of her back, saw him reach forward and place a hand on top of Ian’s head - 

\- and everything was white. 

“Oh my -”

“Where did they come from?”

"Was that  _Alcor?”_

 _“That’s blood_  someone get me a stretcher, stat -”

“It’s his eye,” Mira mumbled, as someone gently lifted Ian’s limp weight from her arms. “Maybe his eardrums but his eye, I’m not hurt, please, he might have already lost too much blood -”

“It’ll be all right,” a warm, kind voice said in Mira’s ear, over the beeping and the crackle of intercom static in the background. “You’re safe now. They’ll take good care of your friend. Come with me, we’ll get you checked out.”

Something heavy and soft settled on her back, around her shoulders, and Mira let herself be guided to her feet by the kind voice and the reassuring, steadying hands. 

The last she saw of Ian was the stretcher someone had called for, flanked by running people in scrubs, vanishing through a set of swinging double doors and out of sight.

...

Everything was floating.

It was the first thing Dipper noticed, the familiar-unfamiliar lapse in gravity. The forest around the Mystery Shack was flashing zoetrope-fast images across the flat, cartoon surfaces of the pines, images past, present, future, things no mortal eyes had - or should - see, secrets of the fundamental workings of the universe. Dipper barely spared their wild unspooling a glance as he dove for the hovering, slowly disintegrating Shack in the middle of the clearing, every window, door, and crack streaming with blue light from somewhere below. He wouldn’t find what - who - he was looking for in that wilderness.

Every aspen-bark eye twitched to follow Dipper as he hovered to a stop outside the front door. He glanced up at the strange and too-bright stars and the massive wheel arching overhead like a rainbow’s evil twin, symbols burning a furious red, ponderously turning around the little patch of world. He wondered vaguely if the deep, distant groaning he could hear was coming from the house or the turn of the wheel.

Dippper shrugged the thought away. He didn’t have time to find out - there was no telling how long the surgery would take, how long the doctors would keep Ian under, but he wanted to make certain he knew who would be waking up when they brought Ian back out of the anaesthesia. Mira might not know what Ian had done, putting out his own eye after it had been marked like it was, but Dipper did, and he didn’t even have to go into the well of infinite knowledge he’d inherited from Bill to find it. His human memories told him enough. The red ‘X’ across the milky white eye of the tattooed man who’d once turned a memory gun on Dipper, half-remembered diagrams from the Journal of those same tattoos and a back-door into the mind for a hatefully familiar, triangular figure, the ramblings of a once-brilliant mind gone to seed and the breadcrumb trail that had led Dipper straight to a carefully hidden society, the breadcrumb trail that had started with a smashed laptop...

If he’d been playing into Bill’s hands, walking along the path Bill had laid for him, all along, then there had been something about the Society of the Blind Eye that had made Bill want it gone. And Dipper had a feeling that, if Bill had still been able to control or influence the mind of the man who called himself Blind Ivan, then there was no way he would have bothered getting an uninvolved twelve-year-old to do his dirty work. There was something about the symbol of the Blind Eye, something about the old, old magic it was meant to symbolise, potent in its simple brutality. Something in the sympathetic ritual of putting out an eye had frustrated Bill's powers at least once. And, hopefully, still could.

So there should be nothing to worry about, really. But Ian's mindscape was all wrong, and Dipper was suddenly glad he hadn't waited until Ian woke up to pose the offer he'd come to make. He looked warily around at the watching woods as he raised one gloved hand, and gently knocked on the Shack’s front door. 

The door gave under the first touch, swinging silently inwards. Dipper cautiously pushed it farther open, sticking his head inside. “Hello?”

It was dark inside, dramatic shadows cast by no light source Dipper could see. He floated down a seemingly endless hall he didn’t recognise, long and narrow and striped with light and dark, gently nudging floating decorations and debris out of his way as he drifted along. “Ian?”

There was no answer. But at the end of the hall, an end that Dipper could swear hadn’t been there a moment before, a door creaked open, spilling daylight out across the floor.

For an instant, Dipper froze, unable to go on. When he finally managed to work up the courage to approach, a familiar voice, one he hadn’t heard in a very long time, was issuing from behind the door. Dipper tiptoed forward, feeling deja vu sink its spinning claws into his head as he started to make out the words spilling out the door and down the hall. “...weak! I just want to get rid of -”

Dipper reached out and slammed the door shut. Then, for good measure, he pulled it out of the wall, crumpling it into a ball about the size of a meatball before popping it into his mouth. It crunched satisfyingly between his rows of fangs.

“Enough gloating!” he yelled, to the Shack at large, knowing his voice would be heard across the shattered mindscape. “Where are you hiding him?”

A fragment of debris bumped against Dipper’s shoulder and ricocheted away, spilling familiar Southern tones and a flicker of dying flashlight batteries and the sting of a pocket knife across a palm as it went. “Friends forever,” Rosa’s voice said, higher with youth and solemn fright, and Ian’s voice, similarly childish and cracking mid-sentence, echoed, “Friends forever.”

Dipper reached out and snagged the fragment before it could drift away. He looked, for the first time, around at the hovering debris that filled the hall - here, a flash of a smile, there, a snatch of a fiddle tune, here, a flicker of colour and light as a linework figure dashed across a screen - and smiled, gathering them all towards himself. A few dropped into place, then more, more and more stacking on each other in uncomfortably familiar glowing blue bricks and slotting in to fill the missing spaces until a plain white door hovered in the hall in front of Dipper.

Splashed across it, in something Dipper knew at a glance was blood, was a crude drawing of Bill's single eye, slashed out with a brilliant red X. 

“You weren’t hiding him,” Dipper said, half to the mind around him, half to himself. “He was hiding from  _you_.”

He reached up to the doorknob, thought better of it, and knocked, instead, just below the bloody lines.

Ian’s voice, though it echoed out of the walls as well as under the door, sounded curiously weak and more tired than Dipper had ever heard him sound, even after seventy-two solid hours awake. “Go away.”

“Ian? It’s me, Di- Alcor,” Dipper said, and a heavy sigh reverberated throughout the house, a few creaks and groans and a faint crash from somewhere upstairs filling his ears.

“I know who you are.” There was a short pause, but when Ian spoke again, it was only from behind the door, the echo from the walls going quiet. “Leave me alone.”

“Look, I can stand out here and talk to you, but this is gonna be a whole lot easier for both of us if you just let me in,” Dipper argued, and another heavy sigh blew the remaining bits of hall decoration and debris hovering around him clean out of sight.

Dipper crossed his arms over his chest, and waited.

After a moment, the door swung slowly open, untouched. Whatever was on the other side was bright, too bright to see. Dipper squinted, thought he could make out an indistinct darker figure against the cold bluish glare, but he couldn’t be sure.

He adjusted his top hat, and, with a confidence he didn’t feel, stepped straight through the door.

It was only seconds before the light resolved itself into a rectangular, white, featureless room. Two beds, each shoved against a wall, steel bedframes and white sheets. White linoleum flooring, white recessed closet with no doors, and shelves instead of a bar for hanging. Nothing on the walls - no hooks, no pictures, no ornaments - and only a single long LED array set into the ceiling for light. 

Ian sat on the bed to Dipper’s right, his hair scruffy as though he’d been running his hands through it, dressed in a loose white t-shirt and sweats and a pair of scuffed black canvas sneakers with no laces, their tongues flopping sadly. He glanced up from the sketchbook he’d been scribbling in, and a jolt stabbed through Dipper, pinning him in place. Ian’s right eye was gone, the socket empty and withered, like the fresh wound had long ago scarred over.

“You sure adopted that into your self-image quickly,” Dipper said, trying to keep the tinge of nervousness out of his voice as the door slammed shut behind him. 

Ian dropped the pen he’d been doodling thoughtlessly with to clap a hand over his missing eye, a brief flash of despair crossing his face before he let his hand drop, revealing his right eye back in place. “Better?”

“No, that’s not what I -” Dipper looked down at his own snappy black suit, the glints of gold at his wrists and buttoning down the front of his tailcoat, and swallowed hard, adjusting his bowtie. “Go with what makes you comfortable.”

Ian let out a long, defeated breath, his right eye slowly deflating to nothing as the air escaped him. “Sorry. That was taking a lot of concentration and I...need all the focus I have.”

He let his gaze drop back to the sketchbook he’d been drawing in. Dipper’s eye followed, to see meticulous, mathematically-exact interlocking triangles slowly creeping across the page.

Every one of them blinked open a tiny ink eye in its centre and looked up at him.

Dipper shouted and stumbled backwards in midair, risking another glance down at the book. The only thing in it was a rough sketch of the very room they were in, the same room Ian was even now looking around like someone surveying their first apartment just before leaving it for the last time. 

“Funny how much I cared about this stupid place when none of it ended up mattering.” The side of Ian’s mouth quirked up into a humourless half-grin, and he started to drum the fingers of his left hand against the closed sketchbook in his lap. “Should’ve just gone through with it when I still had the chance,” he said, softly, and a spatter of blood burst violently across the white wall just behind his head, slowly oozing outwards and upwards across the wall to meet the interlocking triangles creeping down from the corners where it met the ceiling.

“No,” Dipper said, and Ian turned to look at him, for the first time since he’d let his right eye - the  _illusion_  of his right eye - dissolve. The smile Ian wore was puzzled, as though he were simply trying to solve a slightly challenging riddle, and Dipper noticed the wall behind his head go white again as the red of the blood poured down into the flannel shirt Ian was wearing. The triangles had vanished with no trace of their existence, but the shadows in the room were starting to get longer, the light redder, like the sun was setting on whatever this place was.

“Why not?” Ian asked, and a window unscrolled across the wall at the far end of the room, panes of red glass carefully cut and soldered into a rectangle enclosing a triangle with a single eye in its centre. Dipper looked up, saw rafters crossing the peak of the wooden ceiling. “You were right. All along.”

Dipper tried to stop himself from asking the same question. After all the things he’d been forced to admit he didn’t know in the past day, he was surprised to find that, now that he finally did have an answer, it was one he’d rather not know.

“I was -” Dipper started, biting off the sentence and balling both hands into fists. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the window sink into the wall, a recessed seat forming below it, saw the clutter building up in the shadows around the room, could hear a phantom beeping starting in his head - “I was wrong, okay?”

The silence was almost as shocked as the look on Ian’s face.

“I was wrong,” Dipper repeated, more quietly this time, glaring at a patch of hardwood floor no different from all the other patches of hardwood floor that weren’t about a foot to his right and five inches in front of him, watching the red light fade slowly to a greyish, silvery dawn. “You’re exactly the person Mira believes you are, and more. You beat Bill Cipher!” If they’d been in the real world, Dipper knew, the floorboards would be peeling back or catching fire under his gaze right now. But this was Ian’s turf, and the floor remained unscathed as Dipper finally looked up and around at the attic he found he didn’t recognise, after all. “That’s more than I could ever do.”

“You think so?”

Dipper glanced up again at the dangerous note in Ian’s voice. The triangular patch over Ian’s empty right eye socket spun, by itself, settling into place again just as blue fire flared behind it. “I  _AM_  BILL CIPHER! And -” He stopped, struggling out of the ugly plaid mustard-yellow sport coat he wore over his crisp white shirt, tossing it behind him onto the hood of a car that looked like it had just been wrecked, the nose crumpled beyond recognition, though the cheery signs in the window still offered it for sale, pointing out the undamaged window glass and the still-working satellite radio. “And there’s nothing that can change that. Not you. Not some stupid society that thought they could outthink me.” His voice went very small and very quiet as he wrapped his flannel shirt, the same rich red as arterial blood, a little closer around himself and sank down to sit heavily on the too-small bed with the galaxy-patterned sheets. “Not even me.”

Dipper looked around the small room, noticing the family pictures on the bookshelves and the careful assortment of interesting rocks beside them, the violin case lying open under the window and the collapsible music stand beside it, the sketchbooks strewn amongst the textbooks across the oversized desk, the posters of cartoon characters and astronauts and airbrushed fantasy art pinned to the walls, the projected stars wheeling across the ceiling. As he watched, they formed into constellations, familiar symbols picked out in points of light. 

Dipper shook his head and looked back around the room. Eyes stared out at him from each of the posters, and it took him a moment to realise that they weren’t the eyes that the characters had sported before, but the same eyes that had watched him from the aspen trees and the sketchbook and the stained-glass window. The mottos and logos on the posters had all changed, too, their bright, cheerful lettering now spelling out things like FREE WILL IS AN ILLUSION! and DEATH IS INEVITABLE! and SIGN UP TODAY FOR YOUR FREE THOUSAND-YEAR TRIAL OF IMMORTALITY AND OMNIPOTENCE!

“I don’t get it,” Dipper admitted, looking around, wondering if he’d really seen, in his peripheral vision, an eye blinking shut in the heap of laundry piled by the closet, and deciding that yes, he probably had. “You  _blinded_  yourself. You made yourself into a living talisman against Cipher’s power. How is he getting in?”

Ian dug his bare toes into the shag carpeting and looked back up at Dipper. The look of mingled pity and embarrassment he gave Dipper was, Dipper knew, one he’d picked up from Mira. “Sheesh, were you even listening? It’s all me!” The note of pride bled out of his voice as he said, “It’s just me.”

The light dimmed, faded, shifting towards sunset as every eye in every poster and every hidden place blinked at once.

“That doctor -  _Janice_  - she was right. The cross, the blinded eye - you can use it to block his influence.” Ian’s bitter smile twisted, and for a horrifying second Dipper thought it was about to become a sneer before he saw the look in Ian’s remaining eye, the way he shook his head. “But it’s not that simple. You know there’s no spell, no magic, that can summon up the dead. Not  _really_. Not  _right_. Stupid, boring old limitation -” 

He bit off his sentence, turning his face (and his missing eye) away from Dipper to look out between the slatted blinds over the window at the flickering forest below. “Mira knew what she was talking about. Better than she even knew, probably. It’s just memories. Just residual, past-life memories. Same as any schmuck coming out of their therapist’s claiming to remember building the long-lost pyramids. Only difference is I  _actually_  remember building the pyramids. Or having them built for me!” He spun to face Dipper again, his grin a little too broad and that same awful eye looking out of his empty socket for an instant before a bloody X splashed itself across Ian’s face, an echo of the symbol painted on his face in the waking world, crossing it out. The eye winked closed and vanished. 

“So -” Dipper started, and the walls of the tiny room all fell outwards, leaving them standing in the middle of a tiny square of hideous shag carpeting hovering in the middle of the freezing void, wind tearing at them as stars whirled and the symbol wheel burned overhead. 

“So the problem isn’t that there’s something foreign in my head,” Ian said, far too brightly for someone talking about his own obliteration. “The problem is that there’s something familiar! The...blinded eye means I can remember who Ian  _is,_  can sift out those few memories on my own, means I’m not just a slave to what Bill had planned. But I’ve still been Cipher for longer. And I’m  _better_  at it.”

A particularly vicious gust of wind caught Dipper and nearly sent him tumbling away, off the patch of carpet, into the dark and the eyes clustered like stars. He caught hold of the edge of the patch of carpeting and clung, digging in his claws, trying to ignore the way it felt uncomfortably warm and close to human scalp under his hands. The wind plucked at him with a furious howl, ripped the hovering hat from his head and tore at his helpless wings, until he folded them against his back, letting them dissolve into the fabric of his tailcoat. 

“You’re a bright kid, I’ll give you that!” Ian’s voice said, and Dipper looked up, to see Ian’s face, Ian’s body, leering down at him, but wrong. Stretched somehow, cartoonish, all sweeping lines and exaggerated limbs and the half of his face with the missing eye dramatically shadowed by a lock of hair that had fallen loose under a crooked top hat, single electric blue eye wide and gleaming. The long, pointed tails of his fitted red coat flapped in the wind, embroidered flames dancing like the real thing as he leaned down, firmly driving the end of the black hooked cane he carried into one of Dipper’s hands and leaning all his weight on it. “You can probably figure out how this one’s going to end. Anything human breaks eventually!”

The figure that was not quite Ian and not quite Bill ground its cane down into Dipper’s hand, down against the bone. Dipper’s scream was lost in the wailing wind. 

“All you’ve done is messed up my schedule.” The figure straightened up, casually inspecting the fingers of one black-gloved hand. “And I've waited hundreds of thousands of years for this. I can wait a little while longer for this mind to finally break down - and look around! That shouldn’t take long! And then this thing you laughably call ‘reality’ is mine for -"

“For the low, low price of Mira’s life?” Dipper managed, despite the fact that he knew, if the wind weren’t scouring his eyeballs, they would be stinging with tears of pain right now. 

The figure stopped, arching an eyebrow as it looked down at Dipper with a perfect, cruelly amused and detached smirk. 

And flickered. For just an instant, the rich, dark red tailcoat it wore, embroidered scene of apocalypse and all, turned to flannel.

Dipper smiled.

“If you are - were - if you have all of Bill’s memories,” he started, choosing his words carefully, “then you know what he did to me.”  _What he was trying to do to you._  “So you know I know what I’m talking about when I say you’re not going to go through with all this world domination crap. Because  _Bill isn’t you_.”

The impossible proportions snapped back into familiar ones, the sleek artistic lines breaking up back into three dimensions, the look in that sole electric-blue eye turning from smug superiority to confusion, and then to despair. Ian took a step back, away from Dipper and from the edge. “You saw! You saw what it's like in here! You know what my soul's been! How can you look me in the eye right now and say that isn't me? That it’s not going to  _be_  me in - days! Or maybe only hours!”

“I mean it!” Dipper said hotly, grabbing Ian's hooked cane and pulling himself farther up onto the square of carpet. “Look, maybe Bill Cipher shared the same soul with you, and maybe a bunch of what he stuck you with really is part of you. But that doesn’t make him  _who you are_.” He took a deep breath, pushing himself up to his feet, noticing as he did that the wind had died back until it barely ruffled the tails of his coat dramatically. “Who you are is the guy who wouldn’t give up on someone you cared about even after her best friend turned out to be a literal demon out for your blood. Who just  _stabbed himself in the eye_  rather than hurt her - or anybody else. And -”

Dipper stopped. Far from intimidating, the figure across from him now was a little shorter than average, looking shrunken in ill-fitting, borrowed finery, like a child dressing up in his father’s good clothes.

“I can’t win this,” Ian said, to his feet. “I - I can  _feel_  it. I can’t keep fighting forever, and I can’t win. So  _why_  -” His single blue eye flared into negative as he looked up to glare at Dipper, iris and pupil turning blinding white even as the sclera went dark around them. “When you were so  _eager_  to get rid of me for  _months -”_

“I told you already, I was wrong! You’re not just - just Bill in a stolen body. The only reason you’re still here, still fighting, the only reason Bill’s memories couldn’t totally overwhelm you and carry out his master plan, is because of who you are.” Dipper took a deep breath, watching Ian's face carefully. “Mira tried to tell me, but I don’t think I understood until tonight. You’re Ian Thomas Beale. That’s  _real._  That matters. And if you don't keep fighting back, even if it seems hopeless, if you let all this take over..." Dipper gestured at Ian, at the apocalyptic prophecy stitched into his tailcoat, flames licking up across the rich scarlet fabric as though trying to devour him whole. "Then you're going to pay with everything you care about, everything you’ve ever had. Everything that makes you who you are."

They were back in the white room where Dipper had first found Ian, the red flannel shirt Ian wore over his pink pastel t-shirt and jeans and the black hooked cane he turned over and over in his hands the only sign that anything had changed.

"I'm just so...so tired of fighting with myself," Ian said, without looking up, the cane spinning and spinning and spinning between his fingers. "I thought - when they let me off the meds, I thought I was better, when they told me who I used to be, I thought maybe the answers would make it easier, and then when I cut out my eye, I thought that would make it stop, if I'd been anyone else that would have made it stop, but..."

He looked up at Dipper, and then let his gaze drop back to his hands, let the cane drop from his fingers to clatter against the floor. "I just want it all to go away."

Dipper took a deep breath, and held out one gloved hand. "I might be able to help you with that."


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! There’s only a short epilogue remaining after this (and possibly a highlight reel from Santa Grenda ComicCon, but that’s a story for later)! I want to say a huge thanks to everyone who read, who left such thoughtful comments and encouragements! And an especially huge thank you to [seiya234](http://seiya234.tumblr.com) for being my creative consultant, fact-checker, resource on anxiety, and beta reader (and Twin Peaks reference authority)!
> 
> Warning for mentions of eye trauma and cartoon ponies.

_"Then we have a deal."_

_Alcor’s grasp is firm, almost clutching, and the blue fire burns, and the forest outside with all of its eyes is burning, burning -_

"- to review the country's child labour laws. The prime minister's announcement comes after last week, when three girls between the ages of ten and thirteen appeared out of thin air during the signing of a contract with the Nordwext group, despite enhanced security measures after previous magical stunts by activist group MTG. The girls claimed to be employees at one of Nordwext's existing factories, and testified to inhumane working and living conditions they say they were forced to endure. MTG has opposed the Nordwext group's proposition to build six new factories across the country in the next two years, citing the abysmal safety records of the group's existing factories, but they have so far denied any involvement in this most recent action against the proposed contract."

Everything was dark and drifting, and the right side of Ian's face ached fiercely, throbbing every few seconds in a pattern just irregular enough to be agonisingly unpredictable. The familiar cloying scent of overcooked food and the sharp undertones of medical sterilisation went straight to his hindbrain, tugging forward through the fog of sleep the familiar sense of desperate, futile fear that had accompanied every childhood visit to the hospital and his dying father.

It only grew when he remembered, abruptly, what he'd given up. 

There was a warm pressure in his left hand, a hand in his. Ian tried to give it a squeeze, to let whoever it was know that he was awake, he was alive, but the world and his body both seemed very far away and heavy, separated from him by miles of deep, black water. The news anchor's voice continued spilling into the quiet, calm and steady, a reassuring constant in the dark.

"And now, to tonight's top story. Government officials scrambling to contain yesterday's revelations of horrific sentient rights abuses in a top-secret research facility located under the former Edwards Air Force Base got a nasty shock this afternoon, when a freak earthquake revealed another such facility located under the former Ellens Air Force Base in Idaho.  Documentation found onsite reveals -"

"Mira? They didn't have pumpkin pie flavouring, so I got you a London Fog instead. That all right, hon?" There was a quiet scuff, like shoes against the floor, and Ian's mother's voice said, in a hush that was nearly totally unlike her, "He still hasn't woken up?"

"Oh, thanks, that sounds delicious," Mira's voice said, from a little above where Ian was lying and to his left, and there was more shuffling and some scraping, chair legs on linoleum. "No, although I thought he might the second time that stupid monitor went off. Thank you, Mrs. B -"

“Aw, hon, I told you, call me Mom. You’re practically family anyway, I’ve never seen him so head over heels for anyone else. Surprised we hadn’t met you sooner, honestly.”

“Well, we never could get our schedules lined up to get down to visit.” There was a note of regret in Mira’s voice as she said, “I wish it could’ve been under better circumstances.”

“ - independent inquest, after outcry from the international community -”

There was a click, and the whine of the entertainment system powering down. The silence stretched out, Ian wasn’t sure for how long. There was a black space in his memory when he realised he was hearing his mother’s voice again, the sound slowly growing like he was rising from deep underwater, the words meaningless at first and only the familiar cadences of her voice reaching his brain.

“ - don’t blame you for not wanting to hear any more about it.”

“It’s not - I’m just...” Mira’s voice trailed off, and the hand - her hand? - in Ian’s gripped a little more tightly. 

“You’ve both been through hell, I wouldn’t want to hear about it on the news either.” There was a heavy silence, broken only by the hiss of air and the sound of alarms and walking feet from outside, before Ian’s mother asked, “Did you ever find out what they wanted from you?”

Mira was silent, her thumb starting to gently stroke the back of Ian’s hand. He focused with every scrap of his uncertain consciousness, and this time, managed a feeble squeeze back.

Mira's reaction was instant. Her hand stilled, and she asked, "Babe?"

"Mira? Honey, what's the matter?"

"Hang on, I thought - Ian?"

Ian smiled, or thought he did, and with a burst of concentrated effort, managed to give Mira's hand another squeeze. He could hear the delight and relief in her voice as she gripped his hand in both of hers, her voice growing closer as if she was leaning forward. "Hey, welcome back to the land of the living! Don't try to -"

Ian managed to force his reluctant eyelids to lift the barest sliver, and instantly had to squeeze them shut again, wincing as a sharp stab of pain lanced down through his right eye - the space where his right eye had been - and split his head in two.

"...open your eyes," Mira finished, starting to rub circles into the back of Ian's hand again, a thankful distraction against the searing waves shredding his skull. "Your left is fine, but they said you'd have trouble opening it for most of today anyway."

"Wh-" Ian started, swallowing drily after the sound ripped at his throat, trying to ignore the throb of pain that lit the right side of his face at the small motion and failing. "Why? What’s going on? How long was I out?"

"About a day and a half," his mother answered, and a warm hand rested on his shoulder. Still, there was a faint hint of teasing humour in her voice when she added, “You must’ve been making up for lost time.”

“Ha ha,” Ian said, wincing again and wondering if water was an option. “Mira, how long was I  _really_  out?”

“...about a day and a half,” Mira repeated, after a short pause. "Babe, I'm so sorry -"

"They had to take out your right eye," Ian heard his mother say, soft and low, the hand on his shoulder squeezing, hard, once. She kept speaking, soothing, quiet, but her words didn't quite seem to make sense, like the channel had changed to that old cartoon where all the adults' voices were just a series of rising and falling tones. 

Ian tried to ask what was going on, whether Alan was here too, why he was in a hospital bed with only one eye, but there were only trees advancing out of the dark. Woods wrapped around him, still dark around the edges, though now with hints of winter-deep green. Bright spring-coloured leaves rattled like whispers overhead; bleached-bone trunks dotted with eyes encircled him and whoever held his left hand in theirs. He couldn't quite make out their face.

He'd never seen this ring of trees (aspen? Birch?) in his life, but somehow he knew, in the strange, absolute way of dreams, that he'd been here before, in this clearing, with all these inanimate eyes on him. A softly susurrating audience on all sides. Enough to make a man want to search for cover, or make a soul want to put on a show.

The eyes were closing, though, he noticed detachedly, trees fading back into the cool green dark, the rustling growing quieter, less like secrets whispered on the edge of hearing and more like leaves shivering in a breath of wind. He felt the fingers clasped in his start to slip, and turned to face the person holding his hand.

His own self looked back at him, like a reflection, exact to the last detail. He meet his own gaze with a single eye, turning up slightly at one corner as the other him smiled.

Sunlight broke through the trees and across the sheets, white and pale blue, oddly flat and near - far? Both? There was a conspicuous dark blank in the right side of Ian's vision, and a pressure against his face where the place he should have had an eye still throbbed occasionally, though not nearly as badly as before. 

"Mom?" he asked, startled by the croak that came out of his own throat, and the dark-haired woman dozing in the chair by the window started awake. "Not Mom. Sorry, I - wait, you must be Mrs. Ramachandran, right?"

The woman stared blankly at him for a moment, her dark eyes wide and so like Mira's, before sleepily blurting, "Your aura's like a  _hole_  -"

"Vicky, don't be rude." A man's voice, faintly accented, warm and with a ring of good humour. Ian turned, to see someone who could only be Mira's father sitting in the chair by the door, gold-rimmed glasses flashing as he looked overtop of them at Ian. "Beg your pardon. Rantej and Victoria Ramachandran. And you are the new boyfriend Ian, who we are having to meet for the first time under...unfortunate circumstances."

"Hi," Ian said, and fidgeted. There was something about Mira's father's calm, assessing gaze that made him want to simultaneously show the man a card trick and hide under the blankets. "Where's Mira?"

Mira's father smiled. It was somehow totally devoid of all humour or pleasantness. "The police wanted to speak with her."

Ian's throat suddenly did its best impersonation of the Sahara. He noticed, absently, that the IV piercing his right hand tugged against his skin when he drummed his fingers against his leg. "Uh. Why?"

Mira's father's smile didn't waver. "Why is it that the first time we meet you, you have just had your eye removed?"

Ian pushed back against the pillows, wishing that he could melt into them.

"Rantej," he heard Mira's mother say warningly, and Mira's father bobbed his head, still grinning as he waved a hand.

"You will forgive a father for worrying about his daughter, I'm sure." He pushed himself up out of the chair, peering out the window into the hall before turning back to face Ian. "Which is why I'm sure you won't mind me asking: the stabbing, it had nothing to do with gangs?"

Ian laughed out loud. It was pure, nervous reflex, and he clapped his mouth shut instantly, but the damage was done. Mira's father was looking at him like he'd suddenly grown horns, and he could feel Mira's mother's look of confusion even with his back turned, and  _wow_  but they were just  _so wrong_  -

"Nothing to do with gangs, promise!" Ian said brightly, and then, because his head was still a bubble of giddy relief and pain medication and there was still a dark spot hovering like a grim reminder in half of his vision, "Mark of a thousand-year-dead demon, actually!"

He wondered, briefly, if he'd fallen into another dream and not realised it when Mira's mother let out a long breath and Mira's father's shoulders relaxed in obvious relief, a real smile crossing his face.

"Oh, demons," Mira's mother sighed, as Mira's father took two steps up to the bed and clapped Ian on the back. "We can deal with  _demons_." She said it like they were a mildly annoying infestation of lovable raccoons in the attic, rather than the scourges of humanity and all it stood for, and Ian wondered if he’d really figured out how to sink into the pillows as they sagged underneath him, letting him sink back down as he burst out laughing.

“Seriously? Then you know - stars, this is  _priceless_.” He sucked in a breath, grinning at Mira’s parents. “Mira thinks you guys are convinced Alcor was just an imaginary friend!”

Mira’s mother shot a look at Mira’s father that was part disbelieving smile, part confusion.

“She  _knows_  I have the Sight,” she said, at last.

“I thought she wouldn’t talk about it because she was trying to protect us,” Mira’s father said, with a shrug.

“Oh,  _wow._  You have to tell her - but when I wake up, okay? I can’t miss this.” Ian tried, with no success, to smother a yawn.The warm dark was creeping back up around him, sinking him further into the bed. “Uh, speaking of which, nice to meet you, but I’m going to pass out now. Apparently traumatically losing a major organ can really exhaust you!”

"I'm sorry," Mira's mother said, and Ian glanced in her direction, around a pillow that threatened to swallow his head. "About - your aura. I must have been dreaming, it's not - it's red." She paused a moment, those eyes that were so much like Mira's fixing Ian with a look like he'd never seen on Mira's face, and said dreamily, "The bloodiest, deathliest arterial red I've ever Seen."

Ian opened his mouth to thank her, but her face melted, into a horrible black fog with two lamplike, staring round orange eyes, and then a red velvet curtain swept aside and the world swam in front of him. The jagged black-and-white chevron pattern that covered the vast expanse of empty floor was dizzying enough with only one eye. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like with actual depth perception -

_Hands on his shoulders._

_Tea going cold on the low table beside him. When had he sat down? The cold leather of the armchair creaks as he tries to shift, fails. His body refuses to respond. Slowly, so too do his thoughts. It’s a comfortable chair. He doesn’t want to leave it. His tea’s going cold._

_Mira, seated across from him, silhouetted against red curtains. Eyes locked on his and gaze never wavering. Tall, thin, short, fat, smiling or stoic, hair long, short, wild and all colours of the rainbow, a thousand different shades of skin. Her eyes change but never move, her stare steady, the shooting star shining on her hot-pink sweater the only other constant._

_A voice, very close to his ear, familiar, almost friendly. “You didn’t really think you could win, did you?”_

“- just weird. You really have no idea why?”

The light glared, halogen-white spotlight. A hand dipped into his vision, six fingers wrapping around a travel mug, and he rolled over to fix the hand’s owner with his single eye. Lenses flashed with reflected light as she turned to look back down at him, her head silhouetted against red curtains.

He didn’t mean to say anything, the words were just there, bubbling up to the surface, and it took a moment to realise it was his voice that had said them. “Heya, Sixer! Long time no see!”

The travel mug dropped. The  _thump_  and accompanying splash as it hit the floor and spilled was muffled, muted, and quickly drowned out by the exasperated voice in the back of his head saying, "Seriously? That's all backwards! Maybe it was this one -"

The voice rose abruptly to an almost painful pitch, as everything went bright, too bright to see. "That wasn't very friendly of you!"

Ian looked up, straight into the wide, glimmering, impossibly round violet eyes of a rainbow-maned horse with a golden horn spiralling from the centre of her forehead. Princess Etherea smiled at him, something that he dimly remembered anything shaped like a horse should not be able to do, and stamped a gilded, delicate hoof directly in front of him. Pastel flowers burst into bloom where her hoof landed, and Ian took an involuntary step backwards, into the warm, velvety...fur? hair? of another horse, this one a dark purple with choppy blue streaks in her dark mane and entirely too many highlights in her wide black eyes. He tried to back away again, but found himself ringed by smiling ponies, just slightly too real for how unreal they were, all bright pastels and simple, rounded shapes and shimmer and wide, friendly eyes that didn’t blink quite often enough.

“Uh,” he said, intelligently. The sky overhead was a perfect flat pastel blue and seemed too close, somehow. A bird flew past and seemed to fly in front of the sky, rather than through it, chirping some cheery scrap of tune. Ian had a strong feeling that if the ring of ponies would open up some, he’d see trees like green clouds with brown trunks sticking down, hanging heavy with perfect round, red apples.

Princess Etherea tossed her mane and thankfully, thankfully, backed away slightly, though she also raised her head so she towered all the more regally over Ian. Her voice was almost piercingly high, though still soft and calm, as she said, “I think you need a reminder of how to be a good friend!”

“I think I’m actually -” Ian started, but there was a faint orchestral music drifting on the breath of wind that rose, smelling of vanilla and artificial strawberries, there were high, cheerful voices rising in background chorus from all around them, and Etherea was starting to sing as the other ponies closed in around Ian to drag him into a musical montage about friendship -

Ian sat bolt upright in the hospital bed, gasping for air. He pressed a hand to his chest, as if that would calm the frantic thudding of his heart. 

“Babe?” Mira said, from the seat by the window, putting down her tablet. “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

“I - nightmare,” Ian said, sucking in a deep breath. Now that he was awake and no longer in danger of being smothered by overly-sweet cartoon animals, the throbbing in his right eye socket was back, a dull and constant reminder of everything that had happened in the last - actually, he didn’t know how long.

Mira smiled, ruefully, levering herself up from her chair by the window. “I’m glad you’re up. I was starting to think we were never going to get to be alone. Your mom’s a great lady, but...does she ever take a  _break_  for five seconds?”

Ian winced. “Yeah, she kinda lives in high gear. Has she tried to feed you yet?”

Mira grimaced, but it quickly broke up into giggles. “ _So_  many times.”

“It’s even worse when she actually has access to a kitchen.”

Mira smothered a laugh in her hand, and Ian breathed, feeling calm spread through him just to hear her voice, see her smiling. She looked up and caught his eyes - eye, and Ian felt his breath catch, all over again. It hadn’t been - couldn’t have been more than a few days since he was staring into those eyes with a knife held at her throat - 

But she was here. She was  _still_  here. 

She’d even met his  _mother_  and she was still here.

“We do need to talk, though,” Mira said, and Ian swallowed, hard, around the painful swelling in his chest.

“You’re right. I -”

“I told the doctors when we first got here that we’d been kidnapped by a cult and saved by Alcor,” Mira blurted, and Ian paused, the miserable train of thought that had been leading towards an inevitable but painful conclusion suddenly and violently derailed.

“You – what?”

“And of course after Sun-mi’s story broke, she had video of agents dragging you away, so I had to change the story but I – I kind of pretended we hadn’t known what was going on or who had us or why, so it still works, but – and it’s weird, because there’s been all this news coverage but not a word about Cipher -”

Ian decided to let the bit about ‘Sun-mi’s story’ slide. “That’s not going to be a problem. Alcor – we made a deal.”

_“They’re not going to let this go, you know. They’ll keep coming after you, and not just you. Nobody you love is safe so long as the government knows you’re the reincarnation of Bill Cipher. But if they have no evidence, if they don’t know why they took you in the first place -”_

The look Mira gave him was as plain to read as a billboard, flat terror. “You didn’t -”

_“And all you’d want in return would be -” A hand pressed to his chest, pulling away with a tiny ball of blue flame caged within his fingers. The little ball spinning, spinning into a pyramid, flattening into a triangle as Alcor stared, hungrily –_

“No.” Ian shook his head, wincing and mouthing ‘ow’ at the shifting pressure of the patch against his right eye socket at the movement. It wasn’t quite pain, but it was definitely close. “No. It was fair. Memories for memories.” He swallowed hard again, tilting his head back and closing his remaining eye. “He’d take all of everyone’s memories of – me being Cipher, all the evidence, and I’d give him all the memories I shouldn’t have had. The future. Bill’s plans. All the incredible cosmic knowledge that man was not meant to know. Alcor’s browser history. Lots of things.”

Mira’s expression didn’t change, but he did see her shoulders settle slightly, relieved. “And that means -”

“It’s not like he’s gone,” Ian said, reaching up to touch the patch over his eye – socket. “But it makes him…quieter.”

Mira nodded, turning to face the window. The light caught in a few stray strands of her dark hair, giving her a slight halo as the locks fell over her shoulder. 

“Then am I going to -” she started, turning back to face Ian, and he shook his head, wincing again.

“Ow, I have  _got_  to stop – no. We both thought you -” Ian wished, at the sight of the look on Mira’s face, that she was sitting close enough that he could reach out and take her hand. He pressed his lips together, wondering when they’d gotten so dry, so chapped, and said, “You deserve to know. And decide for yourself.”

Mira opened her mouth, and then shut it again, ducking her head down behind her hair and smiling to herself. Ian tried not to stare, failed. 

“Well, I know who you were and I got to see it firsthand, and I’m still sitting here waiting for you to wake up,” she said, with a grin, and Ian couldn’t help but grin back. “If that doesn’t tell you I’m in it for the long haul, then maybe I should make a giant banner with foot-high glitter letters?” She stopped, and her smile shrank for a moment before she bit her lip. “Maybe it’s you who should be thinking seriously about whether you want to stay with me.”

Ian shook his head, again, ignoring the dull stabs of pain in his empty socket with each shake. “What? What – how is that even – I knifed you! You’ve still got bruises from me choking you! How -”

“Because this is all my fault!” Mira’s hands balled into fists at her sides. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t been involved with me. You nearly got killed because of me – twice!”

“Hey.” Ian gave her the best grin he could muster, though it felt tight and he felt an uneasy certainty that his bottom lip was about to split. “Take it as a compliment. You’re worth nearly getting killed twice over.”

Mira bit her lip again, but her mouth twisted up into a smile as she looked back up at Ian, brushing her hair back behind her ear. Ian felt a smile break across his own face, and the warmth that enveloped him, for once, had nothing to do with sinking back down into unconsciousness.

“Am I interruptin’ something?”

Both Ian and Mira spun to face the door. 

It was probably the first time in her life that Rosa Darling had failed to make an entrance. She hovered at the threshold, looking strangely deflated, like some of her outsized personality and presence had drained away. Ian knew he’d seen her looking nervous, dejected, vulnerable before, but he’d never seen her look so...small.

Mira’s brows furrowed, and Ian said, quickly, before she could throw Rosa out, “It’s fine. Come on in.”

Rosa hovered in the doorway a moment longer, shrinking back under Mira’s glare. Ian coughed, and Mira sighed, shutting her eyes and taking a deep breath. Rosa squared her shoulders, taking a deep breath herself and patting her hair nervously before she took a step inside. She walked across the few feet of floor between her and the bed like she was walking barefoot on hot coals, stopping at the foot of the bed and gripping the box she held in both hands so tight that her knuckles went white. “I - I came to apologise.”

Mira raised an eyebrow. Ian’s right eye socket twinged, and he exhaled, glancing down at the bruises around where the IV was taped into his right hand, clenched on the blanket in his lap. “It’s not your fault. Cipher played you, played all of us.”

Mira’s head snapped around and she shot a look at Ian, confusion and a little bit of anger. Ian met her stare and slowly, carefully, nodded, ever so slightly. Mira didn’t look convinced, but she settled back in her chair, slumping down to rest both elbows against the armrests and resting her chin against one hand.

Rosa looked from Mira back to Ian, masterfully almost hiding a flinch at the sight of the bandage over the right half of his face. “Thanks, but - I knew what I was doin’, and I knew it wasn’t right. I got both of y’all hurt because I was selfish, and I - I’m.” She visibly took a deep breath, straightening up again and looking Ian squarely in his remaining eye. “Sorry.”

It was tempting to let her stand there, let her squirm. Pain pulsed through the side of Ian’s face, and he bit down on the inside of his lip, hearing Princess Etherea’s voice grating in the back of his mind.  _I think you need a reminder of how to be a good friend!_

“All right, apology accepted,” Ian sighed, and Rosa sagged, her rigid posture dissolving in obvious relief.

“You - that was a test, wasn’t it?”

Ian shrugged. “Isn’t everything?”

Rosa stormed over to the side of the bed to punch Ian solidly in the arm. “Ya little  _shit_  -“ Before Ian could retort, though, before he could even catch his balance again, she’d grabbed him into an almost smothering hug. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, into his hair, and Ian silently debated whether to turn and give her a hug back or ask her to please stop squeezing his missing eye against her not-inconsiderable chest. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I almost - fuck. Almost ruined everythin’. I was so  _stupid -”_

Ian settled on hugging her back. 

His empty eye socket was just starting to really protest when Rosa finally released him, with a self-conscious pat on the back. She gathered herself up, dabbing at one eye absently as she said, “I know I can’t throw money at this and make it all better - but, well...”

She reached down, and picked up the box she’d dropped, forgotten, onto the hospital bed, pressing it into Ian’s hands. “Figured it was worth a try.”

Ian looked up at her, confused, but Rosa only smiled and nodded down towards the box. It wasn’t big, about the size of a slice of bread and a little deeper, tied around with a slim black ribbon. Ian untied it, flipping back the lid, and squinted at the gold ball, trailing slender gold tendrils, lying inside. 

On his left, Mira gasped. “Is that -”

“State-of-the-art prosthetic.” Rosa clasped her hands behind her back. “This model’s so new it’s not even on the market yet. Which, uh, would mean that technically you’d be part of a clinical trial -”

“A guinea pig,” Ian said, softly. 

“But it’s got advanced neural interfacing, best depth perception calibration yet - I knew you’d want the best, ya draw for a livin’ - infrared, couple thousand times resolution zoom, there’s a filter that approximates a few different kinds of Sight, not to mention the holographic capabilities -”

“Rose,” Ian interrupted, wondering why his own voice sounded so thick, “this is incredible.” He swallowed hard, trying to force himself to sound normal. “I can’t -”

“We talked about this,” Rosa said, with a hint of a smirk. “What are rich friends for?”

...

_Ian wakes up._

_The hospital room is flooded with sunlight. He thought he’d gone into surgery for the optical implantation in the middle of the afternoon, but this is early-morning sunlight, nearly blinding._

_His father, sitting in the chair by the window, looks up from his book when he sees Ian look over. “You’re up.”_

_“I’m up,” Ian agrees.  
_

_His father sighs, closing the book and putting it down in his lap, pulling off his glasses and folding them carefully before he looks back up at Ian. “You’re going to die.”_

_“What?”_

_“You chose this,” Ian’s father continues, gesturing with his glasses towards the hospital bed Ian’s lying in. “I didn’t have a choice. You did. And you chose to waste away - maybe not now, maybe not for another fifty, sixty, ten years, but - to get weak and sick and_ die _.”_

_Ian doesn’t say anything in response. The smell of hospital, the faint beeps and crisp, businesslike voices that were always in the background swell to fill the sunshine-filled room._

_“You’re going to die. And then everything you did, everything you left behind, will die with you. You will disappear from the face of eternity like the mayfly you are now and you won’t even leave so much as a scratch or a scribble to show you were here.”_

_“You’re not my father,” Ian says at last._

_Ian’s father shrugs. “Does it matter, if I’m right?” He puts his glasses back on, light hitting the lenses just so that Ian can’t see his eyes. “Does any of this matter?”_

_Ian thinks._

_“Yes,” he says._

...

The hospital room was dark when Ian woke up, the lights all out save for the dim potlights along the window. He traced a curl of steam rising from the mug of tea beside Mira, curled up in one of the armchairs, asleep with her tablet forgotten across her knees.

He closed his right eye, then his left, marvelling at the simple shift of vision that came with covering each eye. When he opened both again, Mira was smiling at him sleepily, grabbing her tablet and slowly uncurling. Ian smiled back, and for a moment, neither of them said anything, just drinking in the silence.

“Gold’s a good colour on you,” Mira said, at last, and Ian laughed softly.

“Not really.”

“It’s a whole lot better than blood.” She paused, glancing over to her left. “It was very nice of Rosa to fly in that specialist to do the implantation.”

“You still don’t trust her,” Ian said, and Mira squinched up her nose in that oddly adorable way she had.

“I think we should ask Alcor to scan that prosthetic for any kind of listening charms or feeds back to a computer.”

“Probably smart.” Ian lay back, staring up at the ceiling. He hadn’t realised how much he’d taken having a full field of vision for granted, even if it was just to stare at a blank beige expanse. “You want to know why I told her. If everyone was supposed to forget I was Cipher.”

“It’d be nice,” Mira admitted.

_“That’s not a good idea. Look, she does this every life. Every time her soul gets close to Mizar’s, she completely loses it, gets weirdly possessive and does all sorts of terrible things to keep Mizar close to her and don’t even_ think _about making some smart-mouth comment about how that’s just like me. She doesn’t care if Mizar lives or dies, so long as no one else can have her.”_

_“And it’s always been this way?”_

_“Always. It’s in her soul.”_

_“Then how is she supposed to change it if she never gets a chance to know why?”_

“She’s my friend,” Ian said, after a moment’s deliberation. “And I don’t want to lose her. But - she had to know what she did. What she caused.”

“So that’s what she meant about a test,” Mira said, and Ian nodded as best he could with his head flat against the pillows.

Someone’s beeper went off, down the hall, and there were footsteps as a nurse started off towards the source. Mira took a long sip of her tea, and then sat back, looking at Ian with something soft in her eyes.

“You know, I thought I was going to lose you,” she said, so quietly that Ian had to strain to hear, had to make up a few words from context.

“I -” Ian had to stop, to lick his dried-out lips and swallow. “I did too.”

Mira’s smile was wide and white and surprising. “Think that you were going to lose me, or that you were going to lose  _you_?”

“I - both."

Mira’s smile slowly faded, and she looked down, into the mug that was still sending up spirals of steam. 

“I remember sometimes,” she said, half to herself, and Ian listened, carefully. “Things like the smell of pines and rain, or getting a hug from a pig nearly half my size, or – or my brother’s screaming.” Mira tossed her hair back over her shoulder, shaking her head. “I don’t have a brother. I don’t have a pig. I’ve never lived anywhere with pine trees. Not enough to smell on a rainy day, anyway.”

“You know what,” Ian said, still looking up at the ceiling, at the hoist that dangled over the bed and the dark bulb in the reading lamp, “it’s been - three days? Four days? A couple days since we narrowly escaped death and you haven’t kissed me even once.”

“You haven’t kissed me either,” Mira said, with an affronted look, but there was a hint of laughter in her voice.

Ian gestured down along the hospital bed. “Yes, but I am dying.”

Mira actually laughed aloud at that, setting her mug of tea aside and pushing herself up off the chair to tiptoe over and press a soft kiss to the very tip of Ian’s nose. “Aren’t we all.”

...

 

Ian hadn’t been asleep for more than a few seconds before the smell of pine sap and a hint of sulfur slowly permeated the room, spreading out from a point just above the hospital bed. Mira looked up, unsurprised to see a cloud of what looked like ink dropped into water swirling into being above Ian’s head. Two glowing golden eyes blinked open in the heart of that pure dark, menacing and dangerous.

“Hey, nerdface,” Mira said, quietly, not wanting to wake Ian up.

The golden eyes narrowed. Somehow, even without a face, the cloud of darkness managed to look offended.

“Mira, don’t call me nerdface,” Alcor grumbled, coalescing out of the dark and fussing with his cufflinks.

“Okay, dorkbreath,” Mira agreed, just to hear Alcor’s long-suffering sigh. “Ian told me you two made a deal.”

Alcor suddenly seemed even more fascinated with his cufflinks. “Yeah. Uh, I think I got everything I could. It’s just - souls aren’t supposed to have that much memory of their past selves. So much of his personality is based on Bill’s leftovers -” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, he’s never not going to be influenced by that.” 

Mira looked down at the mug in her hands, her reflection swimming in the surface of her cooling tea. “Can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“Mira -” She heard Alcor take a long, deep breath, blow it out slowly. “I’m - I’m sorry.”

“You already apologised, silly.” 

“I actually don’t think I -”

"You did." Mira wrapped her hands a little tighter around her mug, unfurled her fingers and wrapped them back around the mug again. "I just wouldn't accept it because I was being a jerk."

"You weren't." Mira didn't look up, but she could tell from the way Alcor's voice dropped that he was drooping in midair. "You - were right. And I needed to hear it."

"Well, maybe," Mira admitted, and managed to crack a smile as she glanced up. She decided to take the fact that Alcor smiled back, even if it was full of fangs, as a good sign. "But you didn't need to hear it just then. You were trying."

"Okay, so maybe we both could've handled things better," Alcor sighed, tucking his hands into his pants pockets. He blew out a long breath, not meeting Mira's eyes. 

"Probably," Mira said, after a moment. " _I’m_  sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“Okay, we need to stop before we end up in an apology loop,”  Mira said, and Alcor visibly swallowed a laugh. She bit her lip, taking a fortifying sip of her tea before she set the mug down and looked Alcor in the eye. “Look...I want to be in charge of my own life. I want to be treated like a person. So, yeah, I would like my soul back. But...I wouldn’t want it if it meant not having you for a friend.”

She held up a finger to stop Alcor before he could say a word.  “But I want to know the truth. Why Mizar. Who Mabel was. How this all started.” 

Alcor looked uncertain, his wings drawing up tight the way they always did when he was about to vanish out of discomfort. Before he could poof out, Mira rushed out, “You said you would trust me.”

She held her breath as Alcor hovered, the stunned look on his face slowly softening. Mira had known he was old, but she thought, looking at the distant expression in his gold eyes, that maybe she hadn’t understood how old until now.

Then Alcor shook it off, turning to face her with a sheepish smile. “I...really should have explained that a long time ago.” He tucked his legs up underneath him, to sit cross-legged in midair, the tails of his coat dangling down behind him. Mira settled herself into her chair, too, tucking her legs up onto the seat and grabbing her tea. Hopefully, this was going to be a long story.

The smell of pine and rain grew to fill the room as Alcor started to speak, that faraway look crossing his face again. “It all began when our parents decided we could use some fresh air...”

...

_The stars are all falling, falling, streaming trails of blue light across the marvellous sky. The wheel turns, grinding to a slow and ponderous halt. The pine tree ascendant, then the shooting star. He wonders, as it too sinks slowly into the shifting ground, whether anyone is left who knows what it means._

_One by one, the lights go out._

_A single eye fills the dark overhead, wide as worlds and curious. It fixes on him, and he feels the weight of that gaze, of an intelligence vast as the universe and as ineffable, eons old and entirely inhuman. Feels it see him. Feels it recognize him._

_The eye blinks shut, just for an instant, and somehow Ian knows it’s winking._

_And then it coils into a wheel of spinning familiar symbols, into a whorl of whirling rainbow light, collapses into a point on the event horizon, into nothing at all._


	16. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, as has become common for this fic, for mentions of eye trauma/eye injury. I promise to be kinder to people’s eyes in the next one.

The child huddled in the alley was probably one of the most pathetic sights Dipper had seen in his considerable lifetime. Despite the near-freezing temperatures, the boy was dressed only in a pair of threadbare pyjamas, which might once, in the distant past, have been blue. They didn’t look like they could fit a child of much more than about seven or eight, but the boy was still nearly swallowed by them, frayed cuffs stained nearly black draping over small hands and bare feet. Every bone in his shoulders, just visible through the gaping collar of his oversized shirt, and every vertebra of his birdlike neck were clearly visible. When he looked up through his limp, shaggy fair hair, for the briefest of instants before burying his face in his knees again, a look of utter abjection crossed the boy’s hollow-cheeked face. 

It was like nothing Dipper had ever seen before. Instead of the terror or defiance he’d expected, only guilt and resignation swam in the boy’s sole open eye. The other eye was twisted shut, the lid shiny and pink in places, thick with ropy white scar tissue in others, and Dipper couldn’t quite tell if it was oozing pus or if those were just tears. 

_\- the socket empty and withered, like the fresh wound had long ago scarred over -_

Taken all together, the boy was indeed a sight to soften the hardest of hearts. Unless, of course, you could look past the pitiful, bedraggled exterior, past the flesh, through the layers of fear and pain and guilt and childish misunderstanding, and see the shape of the soul within, lit with an acidic blue.

The boy risked another glance up, his nose streaming as well as both eyes this time, and though he flinched at the sight of Dipper and tried to curl into an even smaller space than the one he already occupied, he didn’t hide his face again. Instead, he met Dipper’s eyes with his own, lone, bright blue one.

_\- the half of his face with the missing eye dramatically shadowed by a lock of hair that had fallen loose under a crooked top hat, single electric blue eye wide and gleaming -_

The boy’s voice was nearly inaudible, high and whispery and choked with emotion, but he managed to ask, “Are you here because of my sister?”

Dipper, caught off-guard, tried to steel himself. This child might be innocent, but the soul he harbored definitely wasn’t. It would be just like Bill to try to play on his sympathies like this; Bill would know by now, if he hadn’t already, that Dipper had a huge soft spot for kids, and this boy having a sister was almost too much of a coincidence. He had to keep his wits about him. He couldn’t just let his heart go out to the kid. “Why would I be here because of your sister?”

The boy shrank, if it were possible, even further into his knees. “She’s dead because of me.”

Dipper looked. The boy believed it, with his whole heart. And he felt  _terrible_  about it. Dipper didn’t let his expression so much as flicker, but he knew, with a slow, creeping certainty, that he was starting to lose the fight against himself. He tried to cling to the image that had struck him the moment he’d first followed the quiet whimpers and aura of overwhelming sadness into this alley and seen that hateful soul shining like blue fire at its end, cling to the memory of wild eyes and a smile too big for a human face and bright blades and fresh blood, but somehow it was harder than he’d expected to imagine that look in the kicked-puppy blue eye and its battered twin looking up at him.

“No offense, but you’re, like, seven,” Dipper said, at last. “That’s really unlikely.”

The boy didn’t answer, just pressing his face against his knees again so that only his eyes were visible. His aura ran through a series of bruise colours, sick and deep and muted, with violent reds splashing inwards around the boy’s head and grubby hands. It took Dipper a moment to realise that the boy was shaking, his scarecrow shoulders quivering like a leaf under high wind. The boy squeezed his good eye shut, and started to rock back and forth slightly on his heels, but he didn’t make a sound, even though his fingers were white under the dirt where he gripped his knees. 

Dipper blew out a breath he hadn’t taken, brushing a stray lock of hair from his eyes. “Look, kid, would your parents say it was your fault?”

The boy’s shrug was only about as big as his apparent self-esteem. “They’re dead.”

“Sorry, what -?” Dipper asked, and the boy looked up at him with a sadness much too old for his young face in his single blue eye.

“They’re dead. Just like everyone is.” The boy buried his face back in his knees again, but his voice was full of flat acceptance when he said, “Everyone except me.”

Dipper silently cursed himself. He could  _see_  the soul lurking under this child’s so harmless exterior, he  _knew_  this was all far too perfectly tailored to lay on his particular sympathies, he, he  _remembered_  - 

_“ANYTHING HUMAN BREAKS EVENTUALLY!”_

But...that wasn’t the only thing he remembered. There were also years and years of Ian throwing pencils at Dipper when Dipper rattled off every answer in a crossword that was stumping Ian, Ian absentmindedly wrapping an arm around Mira in the middle of a particularly intense scene in the TV show they’d been watching, Ian in the middle of the night slumped in the rocking chair in the nursery with a soft smile on his face watching his newborn daughter sleep, Ian up to his elbows in suds washing dishes loudly singing some old drinking song, Ian piggybacking his youngest girl while the other two whined that it wasn’t fair and they wanted a turn too, Ian booping Mira on the nose with one finger before leaning in for a kiss...

Dipper shook off the flood of memories. “You don’t have anyone?”

The boy shook his head again, a tiny little movement so quick that Dipper almost missed it.

_...Ian, one-eyed, spinning a black hooked cane in both hands, asking, softly, for Dipper to make it all go away..._

It was a bad idea. Odds were that Dipper was walking straight into a trap. But -

_...one bleary, milky blue eye, one etched gold one, set in a sagging face, nearly disappearing into a mass of wrinkles as Ian smiled one last time before his grip on Dipper’s hand went slack..._

“Fragile neurological attachment, huh?” Dipper said, under his breath, and then, loud enough to hear, “Well, now you’ve got me.”

The boy looked up, everything about him, from his widening eye to his flaring aura, registering surprise. Dipper pretended not to notice. “What’s your name, kid?”

The boy didn’t even seem to breathe for a few seconds. “T-Toby.”

“Toby. Well, we’re gonna need to get that eye looked at, and you’ll need some actual clothes. Not to mention a bath.” Dipper pinched his nose with one gloved hand and waved the other in front of his face in an exaggerated gesture, breathing a sigh of relief when the boy’s eyes turned up slightly in what looked like the very beginnings of a scandalized giggle. Dipper winked, before letting go of his nose and kneeling down to the boy - Toby’s - level, holding out his other hand. “But first, let’s get you something to eat. Sound good?”

Toby looked up, and this time met Dipper’s gaze and held it. With their eyes on level, Toby’s looked even bigger, even more frightened than it had from above. Dipper couldn’t be sure if he was just imagining that he saw something - some _one_  - old and calculating looking out through the baby blue.

Tentatively, Toby reached out a thin, grimy hand - 

“ _EENIE, MEENIE, MINEY... **YOU!** ”_

_\- dawning hope in a brilliant blue eye, a hand grasping his like it was a lifeline -_

\- and took Dipper’s.

Dipper smiled. For the first time since they’d met, the ghost of a smile hovered over Toby’s face as well.

“Hope you like pancakes,” Dipper said, and snapped his fingers.


End file.
